


my way home is through you

by virxil



Series: my way home is through you [2]
Category: Ant-Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Venom (Comics), Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Gender-Neutral Venom Symbiote (Marvel), Interspecies Relationship(s), Other, POV Outsider, Pregnancy, Size Difference, Tentacle Sex, Trans Eddie Brock, Trans Male Character, Trans Pregnancy, Vaginal Sex, canon-typical....cannibalism, there's definitely gonna be some action(tm) happening but that's the focus of the other fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-04
Updated: 2020-05-17
Packaged: 2020-07-30 21:49:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 31,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20104147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/virxil/pseuds/virxil
Summary: Eddie and his other have plans to grow their family. Their appetite is growing, too. There’s no manual for what to expect when you’re expecting the universe’s first half-human, half-symbiote baby—nothing prepared Venom for thehunger.Scott Lang didn't plan on starting the hunt for San Francisco's violent local cryptid, the 'Lethal Protector.' Unfortunately, he just happened to be the first one to catch the monster on camera, and SHIELD has a vested interest in capturing this predator alive.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> hhhh hello. this is a 'sequel' to the previous fic in this series in that Eddie is trans, and he and the Venom symbiote are in a romantic and sexual relationship. it's not necessary to read it, because it is an unholy piece of smut, but it does give _some_ context as to what's going on.
> 
> there will be smut in this, but like. casual smut, unlike the other fic which is mostly filth. take a gander at the tags and you clearly already know what you're getting into.
> 
> this takes place in the MCU, but also draws on the comics. thankfully, many of the comic writers (read: Cates' hot mess) are just as baffled at writing these characters as i am. thus, this amalgamation of their movie and comic personalities is just as valid.

Scott wasn’t able to declare victory over Hope very often. Thanks to years of dedicated training, she was naturally more talented and intuitive than Scott in, well, most aspects.

So when, by random chance, Scott captured evidence corroborating a local conspiracy, he was delighted to throw it in her face.

“Look!” he exclaimed, steering Hope in the direction of his monitor. “Look at that and tell me that’s not a monster.”

Hope dutifully stared at the somewhat blurry image on the screen. Squinting or sharpening didn’t make the picture any clearer. She scrunched her nose up in confusion.

“And what am I supposed to be looking at?” she asked dryly. “Some weightlifter swinging around in a morphsuit?”

Scott huffed indignantly. “No, look,” he insisted. “One of our street ants caught this thing on camera last night. No editing, it’s only in frame for about three seconds before it flies out of view. But _ our _cameras caught it, Hope!”

This explanation, at least, seemed to anchor Hope’s interest. Tapping the screen to zoom in, she examined the dark shape in the picture more closely.

Their camera ants brought back footage regularly; mostly it all got filtered away as spam, but every once in a while the algorithm (which Hank had written, and which Scott didn’t understand at all) pinged, and clips of ‘unusual activity’ were flagged for them to check out.

Last night’s recording, randomly captured around 1 a.m. by a routine patrol ant, was by far the weirdest thing they’d caught on film. Huge, muscular, and swinging from one roof to the next like some kind of acrobat, the figure on camera had only passed over their ant for a short moment.

Most of the thing was dark, but standing out starkly on its face, reflecting street lights like glass, were unmistakably sharp teeth.

Hope’s finger lingered on the screen, tracing over the fierce white line of the thing’s grin. She was quiet, considering, before turning back to Scott.

“So, probably not human,” she agreed, arms crossing, “but you think it’s something worth investing, don’t you?”

“Don’t I?” Scott parroted disbelievingly. “Of course we should investigate, god, look at that thing’s teeth!”

“I see the teeth. I also see it flinging itself around buildings. What I _ don’t _ see is any kind of destruction, blood, chaos, etc.” She ticked fingers off on her hand as she went on, seemingly immune to Scott’s increasingly incredulous expression.

“The _ teeth_, Hope! It’s just like Luis was telling me—”

“Oh, come on—”

“—No, really, this time. He heard from someone who’s still locked up, who heard from a gang member’s brother, that there’s been something targeting criminals. Something big that’s _ eaten_, like, three people!”

“Eaten?” Hope’s skeptic interest in this story weighed over into disbelief. “You’d think if something like this was eating people, we’d hear about it. Or see some of the _ evidence_. You really think a body with a big bite taken out of it wouldn’t be lighting up the media?”

That threw Scott for a second, but still. “Maybe,” he said, “if there was anything left. Maybe it eats whole, entire people.”

Hope pulled the monitor around, gesturing at the blurred black figure on screen. “That’s a whole lot of maybe’s for a thing that’s just swinging around buildings, Scott. You’re basing this all on another one of Luis’ stories.”

Scott held his ground. “One of his wild stories is what led me to the damn suit in the first place,” he argued.

A truce. Hope sighed, staring at the computer with far-away eyes. With the tension fizzling out, Scott realized he’d been holding himself stiff, spine rod-straight and fists clenched at his side.

He took a deep breath of his own, forcing tensed muscles to relax. Bumping heads wasn’t going to help anything when the only thing that tended to work on his partner was evidence.

Maybe Luis’ stories were true, and maybe there was a big monster swinging around the city. Both of these things could be true, and yet Hope was right: just because this thing had big teeth didn’t mean it was going around ripping into people.

Trying to start something without any facts to go off of tended to get Scott in trouble. And besides, having spent his own fair amount of time in jail, he knew throwing around accusations like that could destroy peoples’ lives.

Even if the ‘people’ in this case wasn’t really a person. Ah, well: they were in the age of superheroes and super freaks, after all.

Hope leaned over the counter, clicking out of the footage. “I’ll ask Hank about changing our algorithm,” she said. “Maybe switch it around so we’re listening or looking for things related to… big, creepy, biting monsters.”

Scott smiled, taking the olive branch for what it was. “Good, great.” That was as much as he could ask for, really. “I’ll, uh… Ask Luis if he knows anything about where those rumors came from. Maybe we could investigate closer to that gang he was talking about.”

His partner’s expression grew both pitying and hopelessly amused. “Have fun getting anything out of his stories,” she teased. “We know Luis is all facts and reliable sources.”

She was right, and it was the worst. Scott groaned audibly, and Hope’s smile spread into a wide, victorious grin.

Even when Scott got what he wanted, he still lost to Hope. Still, Scott was satisfied that she was at least taking him seriously.

Gathering info through their ants and focusing on anything to do with that monster was a damn good place to start. Not to mention, it was probably saving Scott’s ass: with teeth like that, Scott didn’t want to confront it without plenty of information on their side.

That was how Team Ant did things: they didn’t rush in like idiots. They gathered intel and acted strategically, and they trusted each other to follow the plan and to have each other's backs.

It wasn’t a plan with any immediate action on his part, but Scott placated himself with the fact that they would be able to figure this out as soon as they could.

One month later, Scott followed Captain America to Germany, kicked a few Avengers around an airbase for the sake of the greater good, and found himself shut away on a waterlocked prison.

One month later, Hope shoved Scott’s things out of sight and out of mind. She focused on her own suit and worked out missions with her father, and when she thought about Scott it was only ever in the context of hurt and frustration.

The clip the two of them had flagged remained buried for months, dormant, while Venom was anything but.

Venom _ thrived_.

* * *

Eddie smiled awkwardly at Anne and Dan from across the table, fidgeting with one of the restaurant napkins in his lap. His hands were wringing the poor fabric, restless, while unease crawled along his skin.

“...That’s right, isn’t it?” Anne turned bright eyes on her boyfriend, face open in a smile.

Dan nodded. “It does get harder at her age,” he agreed with whatever she’d been saying.

Eddie bit his lip. The two of them had been talking about a particularly eccentric coworker of Anne’s, a legal secretary in her late 40s that couldn’t hold onto a boyfriend. Every other week, it seemed, she had some new partner that she assured the office was the love of her life.

The three of them (four, technically) were just exchanging weird work stories. It was a part of their new routine, intent on including their friends in his and V’s life. Eddie made an effort to meet up with the other two at least once a week.

Anne’s crazy coworker nursing delusions about a Plenty of Fish hookup weren’t anything personal. She hadn’t made a single subtle dig at all whenever she brought the woman up, and yet for some reason the anecdotes put Eddie on edge.

Across the table, Dan and Anne laughed at something the latter had said. Eddie’s leg twitched.

** _Eddie?_ **his other inquired gently. They’d been paying attention to the story, curious and baffled by the woman Anne described, before picking up on his steadily growing distress.

They prodded at the upset gently, confused. Eddie mentally shook himself, taking a deep breath, holding it, and exhaling slowly. _ It’s alright, _ he assured them.

Although V must have sensed that it obviously wasn’t alright, they thankfully let the matter drop. Based on how Eddie was acting, it wasn’t hard to pick up that whatever reaction he was having, it was private.

Wordlessly they passed reassurance along their bond. Eddie accepted the feelings gratefully, trying to focus himself on the here and now.

“—Eddie?”

He jolted out of his stupor, blinking stupidly at Anne. She was looking at Eddie expectantly, brows raised.

“Uh. Yes?” he said. Opposite the table, Anne’s expression remained unimpressed.

“Yes, huh? I didn’t know alien marriage was legal yet.”

Eddie sputtered. “What! Okay, okay, I wasn’t listening. You know I wasn’t. Sorry.” The last bit he offered as genuinely as he could. It wasn’t his fault that he tended to get lost in his head, but the least he could do was try to make up for zoning out.

Anne eyed him curiously, eyes sharp. “I was saying,” she said slowly, “that you and V are a lot more stable than Barbara. And then I was asking—joking—if you two planned on tying the knot any time soon yourselves.”

Traitorously, Eddie’s heart did a somersault in his chest.

It was outlandish at best, a fever dream, but for half a second his mind couldn’t help but start to form that image. A church, of course, the setting, with him wearing his other as a fine suit, and his family—

** _Where is that?_ **the symbiote asked innocently. ** _What is that?_ **

Eddie banished the illusion from his mind like putting out a fire. To even entertain something like that felt indescribably forbidden, simultaneously beautiful and repulsive.

_ Nothing, _ he dismissed sharply.

At his distress and his harsh tone, his other coiled sadly in his gut. Guiltily, Eddie rubbed at his stomach. _ Sorry _.

No response. Maybe they still felt how raw the topic was for him.

Eddie smiled ruefully at Anne. “C’mon, you know that isn’t even on the board. Not for me and _ definitely _not for them, ha.”

Before Anne had time to pick up on Eddie’s real feelings on the matter, he hurried to change the topic. “Barbara couldn’t be _ seriously _thinking about marriage after a week, could she?”

The bait was too good not to bite, and Anne gleefully continued her Tale of the Insane Coworker. It was bizarre and entertaining: she hadn’t meant anything personal by talking about how her associate was too old to not be settling down.

That’s what he repeated to himself as he headed back to his and V’s apartment. He focused on the roads, on the humm of his bike underneath him, of what to do for dinner, anything but thinking too deeply on Anne and Dan’s comments.

A church stood innocently off the curb of a stoplight. Eddie determinedly didn’t look at it.

This evading didn’t go unnoticed by his other. They sensed the direction of his frustration, turning their attention to the tall stone building to their right. Nothing in particular stood out to them about it, aside from their host’s purposeful misdirection.

** _Eddie,_ ** they nudged, urging him to elaborate on the building and his apparent avoidance of it. Eddie ignored them.

They didn’t like being ignored, especially when it concerned Eddie being upset. Overtaking Eddie’s hands in smooth black gloves, they took control of their body and steered the bike around the corner into the building’s parking lot.

“What the—what the fuck!” he exclaimed. His hands flew off the bars like they burned, but the damage was done: they were already at the building, and the symbiote planned on getting answers.

** _Wouldn’t tell me about the building,_ ** they argued. ** _Can tell it makes you upset. Like the fantasy earlier._ **

Before he could stop himself, Eddie blurted, “It wasn’t a _ fantasy _!”

The denial fell flat, but he was immediately aware of how loud he’d been. Eddie checked the parking lot quickly to make sure no one was paying attention.

Thankfully it was empty, but Eddie eyed the cars scattered throughout suspiciously. Given that it was a Sunday afternoon, mass would be long over, but he would bet on some of its congregation lingering in the lobby or the basement.

He swung himself off the bike, peering up at the church in distaste. They were already here, and it was the closest place he could see where they were likely to find some privacy that wasn’t a fuckin’ bathroom, but still. It loomed over him.

** _It’s beautiful,_ ** his other said.

Eddie flinched; it _ was _beautiful, but it wasn’t for him, not anymore. He shook his head, trying to rattle out the rusty thought that his father had planted.

Without another word, he strode up to the church. It was all stone, sturdy and arching and spired, like every other religious relic. When he nudged the front door open to the lobby, faint voices and laughter carried up from stairs off to the side.

The lobby gave way to the nave of the church, where the congregation must have gathered earlier that day. Pews lined the room by the dozens, some of them shifted out of place like crooked teeth.

It was big. Eddie felt small.

** _Eddie,_ ** his other spoke for the first time since they’d entered the building. They sounded reverent. ** _This is the place from your not-fantasy!_ **

“It’s not the _ same church,” _Eddie whispered hurriedly. So many churches looked the damn same, it was no surprise V couldn’t immediately tell the difference.

Given that this was a Catholic church, the similarities between it and the church immortalized in his mind from childhood were obvious: the same faded gold lined much of the wood, the same saints stared down from stained glass, even the incense smelled the same.

A part of him expected to glance back and see Carl Brock kneeling beside a pew, even now. In his memory, he was always frowning.

His other twined out of his spine, coming to float in front of his face. For a moment, caught up in his recollection, Eddie could only stare at them. He felt like his feet were planted in the past, and his mind dragged like syrup.

Then his symbiote opened their maw and licked a huge stripe up his face, chin to hair.

Sputtering, Eddie shoved them away. “Eugh, V, not here,” he hissed. He glanced hurriedly to make sure the nave was still empty, half expecting a priest to pop out from behind the altar.

“It worked,” they murmured, thankfully quiet and ducking around his neck like a scarf. Eddie hummed his confusion at that statement absentmindedly, but started toward the corners of the room, looking for somewhere more secluded.

“You were trapped in thought, so I pulled you out,” they clarified. They even had the gall to sound satisfied about it.

“Because licking me up in public is the best way to do that,” he mumbled. He peeked around a corner at the back end of the nave, a tucked-away area hiding a single door.

His other wheezed a deep chuckle against his throat where they were ducked out of sight. “Haven’t licked you up in public yet, Eddie, but I would if you want me to.”

“Oh my god,” Eddie muttered. That was enough to make him blush, especially given their location. “Can you not say those things in a church? I already feel like I’m gonna catch fire just walking into this place.”

“Wouldn’t let you catch on fire. I would stop it.”

“I know, darling. I wasn’t being literal.” He wasn’t being literal, but the fact that his symbiote had taken to indecent euphemisms did make him feel like he was burning.

The inconspicuous door he’d found was thankfully what he’d been looking for. Like all the other big Catholic churches Eddie had been to, this one had their own Blessed Sacrament Chapel.

It was a small room, only furnished by three rows of pews and the altar at the front holding the church’s tabernacle. Quiet settled over everything like dust.

This was a room meant for silent reflection and prayer, but Eddie wasn’t here to talk to God.

He gripped one of the heavy wooden pews and pushed it to the side so that it was pressed against the door, effectively blocking it just in case anyone tried to barge in.

With their privacy assured, his other untwined from his neck, forming their own head to face Eddie in a proper conversation.

“This place makes you sad, but it was in your not-fantasy. Want to understand,” they pleaded. They sounded apologetic, but not regretful.

Eddie sighed, plopping himself into one of the dusty old pews. “You know what Anne was talking about, how that upset me?”

“About that foolish woman? Yes. Didn’t understand that, either.”

Eddie smiled at them ruefully. “You wouldn’t, because you don’t think I’m wasting away being how I am.”

The symbiote reeled back, white eyes gone wide. “Never! Why would I think that? We’re in pristine condition.”

Thinking back to the last words his father spoke to him, the words his other said were enough to make him laugh. “Pristine,” he sighed. “You’re the only one that thinks that.”

“Anne wasn’t talking about _ you _, Eddie.”

“Not directly. But I know she thinks it, just like everyone else has thought it.”

His other peered at him. Distress poured off him from old wounds. They gathered themselves up from his spine and formed around him, holding him in their mass like they know Eddie liked to be held.

Eddie relaxed back into their bulk. The strength of it was always grounding, the kind of backing he’d need if they were unearthing buried grief.

He opened his mouth to start talking, but found his voice wouldn’t come out. Air choked in his throat, and he coughed around the block. His eyes watered, threatening to spill over.

“Eddie?” his other asked, startled at the sudden outpouring. “Nothing in our throat…” They coiled around him in confusion, trying to heal something that they couldn’t find. Eddie pressed his hands to their face, stroking under their eyes.

“It’s not something physical,” he rasped. He cleared his throat, breath still rough. V was uncharacteristically silent, allowing Eddie to gather himself.

In a place like this, it was too easy to get lost in the hate of his past. Eddie petted the symbiote rhythmically along their head, a familiar comfort in touching their slightly sticky, firm shape.

It had just a bit of give under his hands, and stuck to his fingers slightly whenever he pulled away. When the two of them had first bonded the feel of it had grossed him out; now he fell asleep holding onto them every night.

Time and chance had brought him and V close. If he had missed that chance, if he had floundered any longer without purpose and without connection, he could still remember what he had planned that day on that bridge:

To find a church, just like this one, and take his gun and press it under his throat.

The symbiote went taught around him. Black threads wrapped together at the ends, holding him tight in their grip.

“Would never let that happen.” Their voice was firm, even though the black tendrils around him trembled just slightly. “Even if you wanted to, wouldn’t let you do it.”

Eddie smiled, even though the situation didn’t warrant it. “I know you wouldn’t,” he murmured, pressing a chaste kiss to their teeth. “And I wouldn’t ever want to, not anymore.”

Their grip relaxed slightly, though they maintained their hold around him. “Still has nothing to do with what Anne said.”

“It’s just… I’m a fuckup, you know that. I ruined what I had with Anne, I lost my job, I was single before her since college, and I haven’t spoken to my father in, god, six years?”

“You can’t find him?”

Eddie laughed bitterly. “Oh, I know exactly where he is: the same suburban shithole he raised me and my sister in. He plans to die in that house, but I’m not welcome back.”

His other was quiet. They were starting to get it, so Eddie kept going. “I’m a mess of a human. I’m almost 40 and I don’t have _ any _damn family. It’s just like that woman we were talking about, just like my dad was saying since I was born—”

“Eddie—”

“—I’m a mistake of a person. My mom paid for my birth with her life, and how do I repay that?” Eddie made a cutting motion with his hand. “I _ snipped _the fuckin’ family tree. I ruined any chances of having that.”

“You are not ruined.”

“Not for _ you _,” Eddie allowed, rough, but the high of his despair pulsed in his head like anger. 

“Not for _ us_.”

He and his other, tied together at the molecular level, until separation or death. His body had always and would always be perfect for them. Realization cooled his rapid heart. He repeated with reverence, “Not for you.”

Silence took over the room again. V was a liquid dark shadow braided around him; in a place like this, surrounded by gilded icons and sacred remains, the two twined together felt like an effigy.

His symbiote broke the silence. “I don’t see why the two of us are not a family. We live together, and we love each other, and we will be together forever.”

Eddie sighed. “We’re a couple, but not really a family.” He gestured to the church around them. “How I was raised, how a lot of the world sees it, a family is a man, a woman, and a bunch of kids. A marriage.”

“Much of the world is stupid. This has been established.”

“Oh, I know,” he huffed with a laugh. “But there’s some truth to it, y’know? Anne and Dan, they’re a couple, but they’re not a family yet, because there’s no kids to tie them together, and they’re not married.”

“I see.”

“Yeah.”

“In that case, it’s simple. We will get married.”

All the breath rushed out of Eddie. He would have liked to claim it was amusement, but that wasn’t right at all. It sounded too much like a sob for that.

“It’s...not that simple,” he said, throat tight. The emotions bubbling inside him at his symbiote’s comment felt like they were crawling up his windpipe.

The coils holding Eddie rippled with discontent. “Why is it not simple? You were going to marry Anne, and that was simple. Why will you not marry me?”

“Marrying Anne was never going to be _ simple _—and hey, I managed to fuck that up anyway, so not a great comparison.”

V was undeterred. “We are _ already _married, Eddie: at the molecular level, a marriage between minds. A human marriage is a mere formality compared to how the two of us are tied together.”

Eddie breathed deeply. “I know,” he murmured, hand still stroking his other’s face absentmindedly. “Darling, you know I would marry you if I could.”

Fleeting thoughts passed along their bond, notions of laws and tradition. V wasn’t a legally-existing person, not even a human, and a formal marriage acknowledging their bond would be impossible.

The symbiote was quiet at that. A part of them, despite annoying human regulations, was appeased with the private bond they shared. But they could still feel the deeply planted misery in Eddie that had taken root at a young age.

Over the years, over his transition and his family and fiance’s rejection, those roots had grown. The need to be a part of something _ bigger _was a seed at the core of Eddie’s being.

He no longer had a place in his birth family, and the family he’d faintly considered growing with Anne was long out. The symbiote fulfilled so much of this need, Eddie finding meaning in being half of Venom, but a part of him yearned for more.

They would be that _ more_. Eddie needed family—they would be that family, or a part of it.

“The other option,” they said. “You said another way one could create a family would be getting children.”

“_Having _ children,” Eddie corrected automatically, then the words registered and he caught himself. “Wait, what? That would be something you’d _ want _?”

Never had he felt anything resembling a paternal instinct coming from his other. V’s world was, literally, Eddie. Sure, they had mutually discovered their passion for vigilantism, and they devoured romantic comedies and food-centric television, but the bond between the two of them actually gave them life.

To think that they would even consider something like having kids was outlandish.

“Klyntar do not traditionally have children; we spawn, fully formed, and immediately seek a host. I myself have spawned five times—”

Eddie felt the floor drop out from under him. “Excuse me?! You’ve—you’ve _ had kids _?”

“No,” they pressed, “I’ve spawned, involuntarily. Five symbiotes extracted forcibly from my being.”

The words ‘extracted forcibly’ hung in the air. The specifics of how separate beings could be ‘extracted’ were alien to Eddie, but the idea of being forced to reproduce, and then separated from those children…

He didn’t know he could, but Eddie found himself hating the Life Foundation even more. A part of him wished Carlton Drake was still alive, just so that he and his other could bury their teeth in his throat.

Praying the question wasn’t insensitive, Eddie asked, “What happened to them?”

“As far as I am aware, they all perished during the various trials at the Life Foundation.”

Eddie swallowed. The only emotion he could sense from his other’s side of the bond was a faint regret at the spawn’s fate, but he himself was much more affected. He didn’t understand how they could discuss their own children being taken from them so casually.

His other seemed to pick up on his confusion. From the mass that held him, two tendrils emerged to thread through his fingers. Their hands held Eddie’s in place on V’s smooth black head.

“My sweet Eddie,” they cooed, “bursting with sentiment. Don’t need to be so sad: the spawn would be monstrous, born captive and in pain. Their demise was a mercy.”

“How can you say that?” Eddie asked desperately. Despite their reassurances, he was shaken at the knowledge that his symbiote had had their own children ripped from them, and then wiped out.

His pulse thudded. In V’s firm grip, his hands were clammy.

“They were never children,” they continued. "No part of them was human in that way. Still I mourned them. Rage and despair consumed me in my captivity. But they are gone, and now we are here.”

Eddie couldn’t get it. It felt like he was just grasping at another language. “After all that, you’re still. You’d still want spawn with me?”

The symbiote shook their head, a human gesture they’d picked up that displaced Eddie’s grip so that he and his other were holding hands in his lap.

“_Not _ spawn. A family is a couple and children, you said. And you want a family. We’ll have children.”

“I don’t understand,” Eddie said, the words ringing hollow. This whole conversation felt like it was happening to someone else, like he was floating outside the grip of his symbiote and drifting out along the pews.

V considered him. Eddie could feel them weighing their words; they weren’t often that considerate, preferring blunt honesty and trampling over social niceties, so the knowledge that this was serious enough to warrant it set off anxious flutters in his stomach.

“I have said before that you affect me much the same as I affect you. I am able to create human-like parts, which are largely compatible with your own. This extends to more fundamental organic matter.”

Eddie blinked at them, understanding the words but not their meaning. Sensing this, V continued.

“We could have children, Eddie. You and I.”

For the second time in that conversation, it felt like Eddie had missed a step on a staircase and dropped through to the floor.

Ever since he’d transitioned, he’d considered himself a eunuch. Castrated, chemically, having grasped branches of the family tree and snapped them off through his own choices.

Even with Anne, though the two of them had only briefly discussed having children, the idea had always been adoption. Biological kids were out of the picture. It had become a central truth that overlaid any future plans.

As he’d settled into his life with his other, he’d found fulfillment in being a part of Venom. Worries about the future began to focus on not getting caught, on seeking out the absolute dredges of society, on keeping V satisfied with their routine.

Conventional plans—marriage, careers, kids—seemed so oddly insignificant in the face of being Venom, he’d never considered his other would be interested in things so seemingly mundane.

Those were all dreams he’d given up, mostly satisfied with being _ them. _ Now his symbiote extended the possibility of more.

He tried to tamp down on his heart jumping traitorously in hope, too used to doors being slammed in his face. But V didn’t lie, and despite every logical urge in Eddie to shut them down and explain why he couldn’t, he couldn’t help but consider ‘what if’.

What if he could have a family with his other? A life beyond the pursuit of their own bloody justice? What would that even look like?

Ignoring his best judgement, Eddie wet his lips and asked, “How would that work?”

* * *

Lydia gathered her bags, double checking to make sure she hadn’t left any of her tupperware behind. Cleanup had taken just as long as preparation, she thought wistfully. It was well past three p.m., and everybody but the Father had already headed home.

“Are you sure you don’t need any more help with the rest of it?” she tittered, lingering at the door to the stairs. Father Mallorey smiled.

“You can’t cleanup everything around here, Lydia. I know your back isn’t what it used to be.”

She frowned, stubborn, despite the truth of the statement. Just because she was _ old _ didn’t mean she couldn’t pull her own damn weight. She said as much to Father, and he laughed.

“You made the food!” he said, gesturing to the now-empty, long plastic tables the group had set up hours earlier. “You’ve more than pulled your weight. I appreciate all your help, but this _ is _ my job. Head home, Lydia.”

“Fine,” she huffed, shuffling her bags of tupperware around so she could get to the doors. She tugged it open, careful not to drop anything, but hollered back as she left, “I’ll see you at Wednesday Mass, Father! And this old bag plans to be there early!”

“You don’t need to be! I can set up myself!” he called back to her. Lydia, of course, ignored this, letting the door swing shut behind her.

The stairs were a challenge: she carefully trudged up one-by-one, trying to make sure nothing dropped while also trying not to trip over her own shoes. Maybe she should have made two trips, but she was already out the door, and damn if she was going to give Father Mallorey the impression she couldn’t get around by herself.

She was making good progress, but the top step at the upstairs carpet happened to have some give. Her foot caught on a lump of rug, and she gave a brief shout as she felt herself going down.

Mercifully, she never hit the floor. She heard a young voice shouting, “Careful!” and then surprisingly strong arms taking hold of her. Somehow, despite the two arms helping her up, the young man in front of her had also managed to secure all of her bags.

“Well, thank you!” she said, embarrassed but grateful. She squinted up at the young man that had helped her, curious, and asked, “And how on Earth did you catch my tupperware?”

“Tupperware?” he asked, glancing at the bags that had found themselves carefully propped up on the floor. “That’s what you have in those bags? How much do you _ have? _”

So he didn’t want to answer her question; fine by her, she supposed. Everyone had their little tricks, especially nowadays. Maybe this boy was one of those super-ed people, or however they were calling them, but that was certainly none of her business.

“I have enough,” she replied simply. At the short response, the boy laughed, scratching his neck self consciously.

“Yeah, alright, fair enough,” he said. Then he spaced out a bit, like he was listening to something that she couldn’t hear.

That was just as suspicious as the bags, but they made those MP3s so small now, she very well could be missing it. Nonetheless, she felt the need to let him know that he wasn’t as sly as he thought.

“And what are you listening to there?” she asked, gesturing at his expression. The man jumped, looking strangely anxious.

“Oh, uh, just my significant other,” he said, pointing at his ear. He tilted his head, and Lydia noticed a sleek black device that she couldn’t see earlier. They really made them discreet!

“How lovely, to get to have them in your ear whenever you’d like,” she said, and she meant it. They’d never had anything like that when she was a young lady. 

The man smiled. “Yeah, I’m pretty much always connected to them,” he agreed. He stuck out his hand. “My name’s Eddie, by the way.”

She took it, noting his firm grip. “Lydia,” she offered. “I haven’t seen you around here before, Eddie. Are you new to our church?”

“Oh, not exactly. I was mostly just passing through.” He glanced around the lobby, then past her into the main congregation hall. “It’s beautiful. I was, uh, in the Sacrament Chapel. A good place if you need to think, or for a private conversation.”

Lydia nodded. Technically the Chapel was for personal prayer, but she was no stranger to the need for a place of sanctuary. “Trouble with your partner?” she asked kindly. So sue her, she was old and she couldn’t help but want to meddle.

Eddie blushed. Poor dear, she thought, but when your face goes dreamy listening to someone, you know they’re in deep. Eddie shook his head.

“Not exactly,” he said, cagey. His face was still all red, and Lydia absently noted that he was quite handsome. What a lucky lover that must be in his life.

“Well,” she said, gesturing ahead of her, “I do need some help getting these bags into my car, if you’d like to tell me about it on our way.” She didn’t _ need _ the help, but he had the look of a young man that would feel compelled to offer it.

“Of course,” he said, then stopped himself. “Uh, it’s kind of complicated though. And private.”

Lydia laughed, gathering her own fair share of her (many) bags. “Dear, I don’t need the details and I don’t claim to have the answers. But old age does lend itself to some good advice.”

“Right,” he murmured. He absently collected bags on his arms, his face getting that same far-away look as before. 

Lydia decided to offer her first piece of advice: she snapped her fingers, loud, right in front of his face. Eddie jumped in surprise, startling to attention.

“First piece of wisdom,” she said, “is not to giveaway that you’re a lovelorn loon with a doohickey in your ear.”

“Right,” he sighed again, adjusting his grip on his bags. At least he realized now what he was getting into, she thought. Lydia led the way out the lobby doors, out into the parking lot.

“Now, tell me about what you two lovebirds are so in a tizzy about,” she prompted. Discreetly she steered the two of them the long way around so she’d have more time to offer the boy advice.

His brow furrowed, then he said, “We’re thinking about having kids.”

“Well!” Lydia exclaimed. “Congratulations to you both, or so I would say. But you seem torn up about it, don’t you?” She patted his arm with her free hand. “Don’t want them, dear?”

“I do want them,” he said, the words sounding like a dirty admission. He looked exhilarated just saying them.“It’s just, I never really thought it would be possible, and now it all seems like it’s possible so fast, it’s…”

So that’s the situation, she realized with a smile. A situation she was all too familiar with. Facing forward, she began saying, “When I was much younger, it wasn’t at all common for two women to be together.”

At this, she caught Eddie’s attention. He went from absentmindedly listening to focused, sharp as a whip. Lydia still wasn’t certain at the details of the situation, but she understood what that expression meant. She smiled up at him.

“Then in the 80s, very suddenly it seems, I found a woman and fell in love. I was already past my prime, she had a boyfriend, and I figured she’d want nothing to do with me in that way.

“But one day,” she continued, “she came up to me and she said, ‘Lydia, I left him, I’ve been too scared for too long, and I’m sorry for turning you away, because I feel the same way about you.’” She glanced at Eddie, who was still riveted upon her.

Lydia whacked one of her bags against Eddie’s leg gently. “What I’m getting at with this,” she stressed, “is that when everything you’re looking for comes along, you have to grab it with both hands and hold on tight, even if it seems too good to be true.”

Eddie blinked. His eyes looked a little wet, and Lydia knew at that that her guess had been right. He cleared his throat, and asked in a rough voice, “And what happened? With you and your girl?”

At this point they’d arrived at Lydia’s car. She placed her bags in the backseat and took the ones hanging on Eddie’s arms, shifting them into place. She smiled at him and said, “Well, she’s probably waiting for me at home, since I took much too long here today talking with a handsome young man.”

Eddie laughed, and grinned, and looked altogether pleased. He glanced down at his shoes on the pavement, the easy expression on his face softening. Gaze still downward, he asked her, “So you think I should go for it? Say damn the consequences and take the chance? Say yes to kids?”

“Hon, I wouldn’t dare to tell you to make a choice like that so suddenly. But if what’s holding you back is that it doesn’t seem like something so good could be possible, then I think you should look at your darling and realize: if I’m so lucky that they’d pick me, then it must be that good things _ are _ possible.”

“I am lucky,” he murmured. His head was still tilted down, but he had that dreamy look to his face from earlier that suggested he may be talking to his partner. “That they’d choose to stay with me over everything else, I’m. I’m already unbelievably lucky.”

Lydia nodded at him, satisfied. “Now, that’s the attitude you need to have,” she said. She gave his arm a last reassuring pat. “I need to head out, dear, but I’m here every Sunday and Wednesday for Mass.”

He nodded, eyes still focused on some unseen distance. Stepping back from her car and shoving his hands in his pockets, he even thanked her for her advice. So polite, Lydia mused as she started her noisy old car. She leaned out her window to offer him parting luck.

“I hope you figure out what you’re looking for, Eddie,” she yelled over the sound of her old engine. “And if you know what you want, I hope you find the courage to take it.”

Eddie lifted his head, grinning at her as she readied to pull away. His teeth looked awfully sharp, Lydia thought. There was an odd shadow around his clothes, a black shading that made him look bigger than he was.

“Don’t worry,” he called after her. “I plan on it.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for the positive response!! it warms my cold emo heart to see people commenting & enjoying this blasphemy. us alien fucking hedonists gotta stick together.
> 
> i assure you all, i am very invested in this fic. it is going to be completed, god rest my soul. weird gay alien porn and relationship development keep spirits up in time of need.

Ritual was a social concept entirely foreign to the symbiote, but it was important to Eddie, despite his best efforts. 

His heart thudded hard in their chest in anticipation of what the two of them were about to do. The symbiote didn’t understand, entirely, why what Eddie had suggested was taboo, but they could _ feel _ it: shame, arousal, and righteousness.

Eddie’s emotions always soaked his brain in a delicious slurry, but these tremulous ‘taboo’ feelings were joining their other favorites. Most of these favorites, in some way, involved sex. Klyntar didn’t have sex; before Eddie, the idea of writhing around for the purpose of primitive reproduction had seemed off-putting at best, gruesome at worst.

Then the two of them came together in a way completely different than symbiosis, and they understood the appeal. Primitive suddenly seemed like such a coarse word for it. To feel Eddie’s brain shorting out into animal instincts, firing off pleasure hormones, nerves lighting up like he would burst into iridescence.

They felt it, too, when they let themself. And the thing about being bonded with Eddie, _ loving _Eddie, was that they could let themself spread across the spectrum of human emotions, assume emotions as their own.

Past hosts used the symbiote as a tool. Their bond with Eddie began out of convenience and desperation and rage, but now the two of them were what the symbiote would best describe—after rooting around in Eddie’s thoughts, to his embarrassment—as soulmates.

Between the two of them, they shared a body. This body maintained two distinct minds. But after dwelling within Eddie for months, they came to understand there must be something else to describe his essence, something _ more. _

For a short while after awakening from the fight with Riot, they obsessed with finding this essence. They spread themself across the wide, furled planes of Eddie’s brain, seeking out the spark that would explain this hidden quality. This search, however, proved frustratingly unsuccessful.

Next they tried scrutinizing Eddie’s heart. The human heart seemed to be not only a fundamental part of their life force, but also the nucleus of their self perception. So many human expressions across so many human languages seemed to identify the heart as the origin of emotion.

The symbiote lingered in the valves and veins of Eddie’s heart, but found this explanation to be subpar. As far as they could tell, the heart was merely a crucial organ. Listening to it pulse, constantly, rhythmically, was admittedly deeply soothing, but it didn’t explain why his heartbeat was the perfect cadence for their bond.

After cementing their relationship in more human terms, the symbiote finally discovered what it had been looking for. When Eddie first told them he loved them, they were overcome with a feeling like falling from the sky, like being flung through space and rushing past stars. From Eddie’s side of their bond, they could hear that beloved heart racing in anxious insecurity.

They worried they would tremble apart from devotion. But they didn’t—instead, they found themself responding truthfully in kind, and then a feeling not unlike the first time the two achieved true symbiosis.

Like an unstable element that had finally balanced its protons, they found themself a new phenomenon entirely. They were no longer _it_, _itself the symbiote,_ but _they_ _them_self. Eddie’s symbiote.

They had found what they’d been looking for when they weren’t even looking for it. The secret all along had been that Eddie needed to reveal it himself, and he had done so in loving them.

That essence to Eddie that they couldn’t describe was at the other end of his love, and humans called it a soul.

Eddie was skeptical of the very idea of a soul. Apparently, for many humans, the concept of a soul was a religious one, and the symbiote gathered quickly that Eddie’s feelings about religion were coated in toxic self-torment.

Thus, although the symbiote latched onto the concept of soulmates as the best description of the two’s symbiosis, they didn’t mention this discovery to Eddie. Instead, they comforted Eddie with the words he desperately wanted to hear. They were equally as true and to the symbiote meant the same thing: they loved Eddie.

With Eddie, they wanted everything he wanted. Even if they didn’t understand it, even if it was alien to them, they ached to fulfill what Eddie needed.

Sneaking into the church that wasn’t from Eddie’s not-fantasy was a part of this need, apparently. A part of Eddie was interestingly fixated on this concept of _ ritual _. Rituals could be arousing, it seemed. They considered the idea of erotic rituals with some interest, although they didn’t see what it had to do with having children.

“Oh my god,” Eddie muttered, gaze furtive and voice low despite the symbiote assuring him that they were the only two beings there. “This isn’t...this isn’t an _ erotic ritual_, where did you even get that from? Porn? Eyes Wide Shut?”

That seemed unfair, considering they were picking up these concepts from Eddie’s own mind. They formed a head and a mouth (since they were alone and Eddie liked to look at them), responding, “You were thinking about it.”

He blushed, caught. It was always surprisingly charming to the symbiote that Eddie seemed to forget that his thoughts, heavy with emotion, had a tendency to bleed through their connection. Eddie was one of the most volatile people they had met: his feelings wriggled out of his head and into their grasp.

“That’s _ not _ what I was thinking,” he argued. He stepped carefully over the edges in the church’s flooring. “I was thinking that being in a church for this is kind of ritualistic. Not that it’s an erotic ritual.”

They contemplated this idea. “Klyntar don’t have the same concept of ‘ceremonial’ as humans,” they said. When Eddie stumbled over a clip of carpet, they covered his eyes in a reflective white film.

Eddie blinked, adjusting to the sudden night vision. “Thanks,” he offered automatically. He continued through the church lobby much more swiftly than before.

The symbiote refused to let the argument go, however. “Your heart is racing,” they pressed. “Partly nerves, but partly arousal. Can feel it, Eddie.”

Pointing it out seemed to heighten these feelings for their host. He licked his lips, heart thudding harder, as he looked across the empty congregation hall. With their night vision, everything seemed to cast a slight glow.

“Part of it is arousal,” he admitted, voice deep and quiet. Then, before he could let himself continue, he stopped in place. Nerves hedged over lust. “You’re _ absolutely _sure it’s empty, right? And that there’s no cameras? Because if there are—”

“Have checked, Eddie. Multiple times. We’re alone.”

After a brief pause, during which Eddie settled down in a pew close to the altar, they brought up a point they’d been considering since Eddie had suggested this idea. “Confused, though. You said _ not _ to do this here, earlier. Couldn’t even lick you. Now Eddie _ specifically _ wants to do this here.”

The blush that had faded reemerged with a vengeance. The symbiote could feel it from the inside, warming the fatty flesh in Eddie’s cheeks with blood.

“I know I said that,” he said. “And I meant it. Uh, normally. It’s just, this is… it’s a special occasion.” His voice went deeper at the end of his statement, rougher. The symbiote knew this meant he was getting aroused at the thought of it, and the knowledge that their host was stimulated in that way always made them quiver in excitement.

“It is,” they agreed. “Even though we don’t need to. Told you that, Eddie. Could just access the uterus directly to fertilize—”

“Don’t, ugh, don’t talk like that,” he interrupted. His blush spread warm down his throat and to his chest. His heart thudded heavy with heat and blood.

The symbiote laughed. “Liar,” they said. “You like it.”

Eddie breathed out heavily, tilting his head back to look to the vaulted ceiling. Faint light from street lamps caught on the stained glass, and even in the dim room it was striking. 

The symbiote admired Eddie’s profile lit slightly in green, gold and red. Their standard of beauty didn’t exist, but if it did, they knew it would be defined by Eddie, backlit in an empty church.

Compared to last Sunday, when the hall had thrummed with voices carrying up from below, the quiet was a presence. Eddie’s deep breaths seemed small. Arched ceilings and gilded accents seemed to glint at the symbiote from every angle, surreptitious icons peering down at the empty pews.

“I do like it,” Eddie admitted quietly. One of his hands reached out to them, and they wrapped a tendril around his fingers. Another hand reached downward in a familiar motion, and the symbiote dutifully dissolved from Eddie’s body.

Their host sat on the pew mostly nude, only his boxers (which he unfortunately insisted on, ‘just in case,’ he claimed) covering his groin. That feeling from earlier—the bubbling, tingling shame—zipped through his body in droves.

“Want to stop?” they asked, noting the sensation, but Eddie shook his head roughly.

“God, no. This is. It’s the place I’d want to be for this,” he admitted, voice shaky. He held up the hand grasping their form, gesturing with it like it was needed. “I know I’m trembling. And you can feel how I’m, uh, affected. But it’s good.”

The symbiote stared at Eddie, handsome and volatile Eddie, shaking in the dark on a cold church pew. His blond hair was highlighted in a rainbow of colors from the stained glass.

“Strange, strong feelings. But if you like them, we will like them.” They formed a humanoid shape above Eddie’s lap, nuzzling down into his soft hair. 

His hands came to their waist, holding them gently. The pulse thudding heavy in his body made those hands unsteady on their form, the shame-excitement lighting up his brain. “We’re making something new,” he murmured, “something that’s never been made before. There’s something _ holy _about that, isn’t there?”

“Don’t have much of a concept of ‘holy.’”

“Yeah,” he sighed. Eddie’s hands stroked along their sides, kneading into their mass. “I know you don’t. I don’t really either, anymore—”

_ Liar_, thought the symbiote wryly.

“—but the baby we’re going to have, they’re going to be something entirely new. Part symbiote, part human, not just a spawn. No ribs or dust. Just us.”

The metaphor Eddie was referencing was Biblical in nature, they knew, but it went over their head. Nonetheless, hearing him describe what they were about to do made them restless in excitement.

They wrapped their tongue carefully around Eddie’s throat, tilting his head upwards to meet their gaze. His eyes, heated blue, caught the same fractured light as his hair.

“Hope it’s beautiful like you, Eddie. Good heart like you.”

At that Eddie’s eyes went wide. He cupped their face and pressed his lips to their teeth, straining against the hold on his neck.

“I want this with you,” he rasped, “so, so much. But I hope it’s not too much like me. You’re the special one, darling.”

Their host was so terribly wrong. Every day they reminded him that he was _ good _, but it only stuck for so long before his mind slid back to his terrible progenitor. Eddie’s mind had soaked in that man’s words for so long. It would take a lifetime to drain those poisonous thoughts.

Tied together as they were, the two of them had many lifetimes to spare.

They unwrapped their tongue from its hold on Eddie’s neck, a long wet slide that made Eddie shiver in anticipation. Shifting, sliding like oil, they reformed their mass a few feet away, settling up back against the altar.

“Waiting for you, Eddie. Let’s make our family.”

Eddie swallowed, gaze fixed on the sight they made. Slick black filaments connected their bulky form to Eddie, and they had preemptively formed a complete humanoid shape, cock jutting out between their splayed legs.

“Yes, love,” he sighed, leaning over to shove off his boxers. The symbiote admired the strong curve of Eddie’s back as he did so, the firm strength of his legs. Light caught on his boxers as they dropped, and Eddie’s wetness glinted on the fabric.

Finally he was bare, and he walked to them nude without shame for his surroundings. With a tug on the strands connecting them, they pulled Eddie onto their lap. He spread his legs instinctively, sighing heavily and straining his neck again to kiss them.

They stroked their tongue along his lips before sliding inside his mouth. Eddie’s mouth was warm and wet, his tongue small and soft. Delightful microbial cells and bacteria always lingered long after eating. Kissing was one of their favorite things to do, much to Eddie’s relish.

More than kissing Eddie’s mouth, though, they enjoyed kissing Eddie between his legs. Whenever they stretched their tongue to grasp at something, a part of Eddie’s mind couldn’t resist flitting to the last time they’d tasted him in that way. Eating Eddie out was a reliable way to make his thoughts go hot and gooey.

With an arch of their largest muscle, they licked a long stripe up along Eddie’s folds. As always, he gasped, clutching at their shoulders like he couldn’t bare how good it felt.

“Fuck, yes, love,” he breathed, rocking his hips in their lap. They continued stroking along his sex with their tongue, wrapping around his clit with every other lick. When Eddie got excited, this part of his body would fill with blood, much to their delight. Flicking at the swollen thing would make Eddie clench down hard, jolts that shook through his whole body.

The inside of Eddie’s cunt was even better than his mouth. It tasted incredible, rich and filled with hormones and lined in soft tissue, and when they pushed their tongue into his hole Eddie would cry out or curse in rapture.

“Fuck, fuck, baby, c’mon,” he panted. He was pressing his hips down into their own, straining against their tongue, lodging it deeper. “We’re here, ah, for a reason. Get in me, love.”

They were always _ in _Eddie, a part of them was tempted to say each time Eddie begged to be fucked. But he was right: tonight was special, the start to their family, and they wouldn’t tease him like that with the reason for their presence here weighing on them with pride.

Nudging carefully, they pressed their cock into Eddie’s hole. It had amazed them at first, that such a small thing could welcome in their significantly larger body, but they were able to sink into Eddie’s wet heat every time. Foreplay, Eddie had mentioned offhandedly once when the symbiote had lauded his genitals.

As the length of their cock sank into Eddie’s hot cunt, their host groaned above them. “That’s it,” he breathed. “In me, fill me up. Want you deep in me.” With every inch pressed into him he continued rambling, praising the symbiote and begging for them to press their cock deep into his body.

When they were fully seated inside Eddie, they paused, hands stroking along Eddie’s hips. He panted above them, breath shaky.

“What… what’re you thinking about, baby?” he asked, voice quivering.

One of their hands paused on his waist, the other sliding down to cup his flat stomach. They couldn’t tear their gaze away from the sight, and their tongue dipped to caress the surface of his abdomen.

“This is where Eddie will carry our baby,” they said, voice reverent. “You were right, Eddie. This is special. _ Eddie _is special.”

“Ah,” Eddie breathed. Sentiment poured from his side of their connection, fondness and embarrassment and understanding. One of his hands moved from its whiteknuckled grip on their shoulder to join their own on his stomach.

“Never thought I’d, ah, have this,” he panted. “I’m not special, anyone with the parts I’ve got can get knocked up. _ We’re _special, us together, and… uh, hard to think with. With your cock up in me, love,” he finished. His whole face was flushed with exertion and arousal, and they could feel the strain in his legs stretched wide across their waist.

“Special Eddie,” they argued, hands gentle on his flat belly. He huffed a laugh above them, his head falling against their shoulder as he hid his face.

“Sure, if you say so. But, ha. C’mon, love.” He tilted his hips, sliding himself along their cock. The wet sound of it carried in the huge room, obscene.

They shifted their hands back to Eddie’s hips, their tongue lingering around his abdomen. Coiling their strength, they thrust up into him, hard how Eddie liked.

He gasped, groaning with the force of it. His blond hair dripped with sweat on their shoulder, and they darted their tongue to catch it, licking at Eddie’s damp face.

“Baby,” he panted as they pounded up into him. “Love, darling.” Eddie always got like this when they fucked; another reason to enjoy sex with their host. Being called sweet names from Eddie always made them quiver with joy.

Hearing Eddie adore them with gentle praise almost made them think that they could have a soul, too. Maybe, they considered through the haze of oxytocin and endorphins, they could share some of Eddie’s. Maybe Eddie’s goodness would rub off on them.

They hoped their family could have Eddie’s goodness. They yearned for it with all of their being. Redemption, goodness, a soul. They coveted it all. Their children, with Eddie, a second chance—

“Fuck, ah,” Eddie choked, and the symbiote found themselves caught up in Eddie’s pleasure. His whole body shook with it, his brain flooding his body with incredible hormones that they got to feel too, like liquid starlight spilling from Eddie into their dark mass.

Riding that same pleasure, the symbiote allowed themselves to release what they’d created just for this. A synthesization of plasmids, proteins, a completely new genetic code that would become half of their child. Technically they didn’t need to orgasm or even have sex to do this, to create this new life, but it was important to Eddie, so it was important to them.

Eddie gasped above them, feeling it. “Oh, _ god, _ you came a lot,” he breathed. He shifted above them, slightly, careful to not dislodge their cock in his body. “Was it, was it necessary?”

Oily black-green oozed, just a bit, from where the symbiote was sheathed in Eddie’s hole. They shifted below him self consciously. “You like it,” they protested. Their hands shifted again to Eddie’s stomach. “Not necessary, but neither was _ this. _”

At the last word, they gave a gentle thrust into Eddie’s stuffed cunt. He groaned, hands reaching down to where they were joined. “Getting knocked up by my alien partner,” he huffed. “The old fashioned way.” 

The symbiote grinned at Eddie, tongue lingering over his belly where, inside Eddie’s more precarious organs, the synthesized compounds they’d created were hard at work seeking out Eddie’s own genetic material. 

“Nothing old fashioned about you, Eddie. Nothing old fashioned about _ this _, either.”

They caressed Eddie’s stomach, careful of their claws. He placed one of his own hands along the flat plane of his abdomen, tying their fingers together in the delightful way that humans were so fond of.

“You’re damn right, baby,” he murmured. “This one’s all new.” He pressed his soft lips to their teeth, keeping hold of their appendage in his grip.

After cleaning Eddie off, and wiping away any incriminating evidence at the scene, the symbiote settled in under Eddie’s skin. Already his body was awash with fuzzy, happy hormones, and they let themselves sink into the feelings.

Eddie was careful leaving, his legs slightly stiff in the way after sex that he didn’t want them to heal. They settled in near Eddie’s gut, close to the organs they would need to be monitored carefully.

This didn’t go unnoticed by Eddie. “Anything I should be worried about, love?” he asked, not truly concerned, but alert with their scrutiny.

** _Not yet, but we’re going to be getting very hungry sometime soon._ **

“Hungry, huh,” he mused. His eyes traced the stars outside, thinking about his luck and the chances that had gotten him to this point. Human lives were so fleeting, but symbiotes lived very long lives.

“Well,” he said, “gotta keep the kid fed, right?”

His thoughts hummed with determination, knowing what kind of _ hungry _ they were implying. In him, the symbiote purred. Both of their minds were thinking of red, viscous meat.

* * *

A year into his house arrest, Scott felt restless enough to be toeing the line of ‘unstable.’

Without word from Hope or her father, he was essentially isolated to Luis, the officer on his case, his ex-wife, her boyfriend and Cassie. Which, don’t get him wrong, those last three were a delight.

One of the very few good things to come out of house arrest was that Scott had plenty of time to see his daughter. Not as often as he liked—that wouldn’t be the case until he was able to live with her again properly—but at least every other day, Maggie would bring by Cassie.

The days he got to spend entertaining his daughter were the highlight of the long year. The adults in Cassie’s life all tried their best to dance around the fact that Scott was technically a criminal and that his house had technically become his jail. He was grateful for that, but it didn’t hide the fact that Scott couldn’t walk his daughter to school.

For Cassie’s birthday, they’d spent plenty of time at Scott’s place, sharing cake (store provided, though Scott had disastrously attempted to make his own) and playing her favorite games. But around mid afternoon, the others had left Scott’s to take Cassie out for a special birthday dinner.

It stung. Grateful as he was to get to have any time _ at all _ with Cassie, the fact that he didn’t get to see her light up over her favorite food (a very specific, reptile-themed macaroni), or get to greet the friends she was bringing home from school, well.

He may be a bit resentful at the Avengers, is all.

Except that wasn’t quite correct; he couldn’t stay mad at _ Captain America _, of all people. In person, he’d been exactly like the image they used for innumerable public school programs, like a brawny cardboard cutout from Hollywood come to life. He was all those things, mixed in with an unnaturally virtuous fervor.

Cap wasn’t the one who recruited him immediately, of course—he couldn’t forget the cold face of the goddamn _ Winter Solider _ literally showing up at his door like a grim reminder of death. That man he’d rather avoid crossing paths with in the future.

Scott got that he was kind of innocent, a victim of some kind of pseudo magical bullshit brainwashing. He wasn’t that judgmental. But the man’s eyes were blank, and it couldn’t be denied that he was very much a trained and successful assassin.

Unfortunately, Scott also definitely saw him holding hands with Cap at various points throughout his jaunt across Berlin. If he wanted to help out Cap again, and God help him, a large part of him still did, he would apparently be putting up with his somber, edgy boyfriend.

At Cap’s request—and the Soldier’s mute death glare from across the chopper, which was entirely uncalled for—he wasn’t going to speak a word about that relationship to anyone. Scott was a walking social gaffe at the best of times, but even he wasn’t so much of an ass as to out _ Captain America _ against his wishes.

He wasn’t mad at Cap and he wasn’t even mad at his grungy partner. Going to Germany in order to fight for justice with the rogue Avengers was too important to regret.

Mostly, he figured, he was mad at himself.

When Cap told him the tragedy he was trying to prevent, he couldn’t allow himself to say no. Scott had a tendency to act impulsively. He ran on urgent ideas, on whatever spark lit up his brain, and checked the details afterward. It was the trait that had landed him in jail in the first place, but it was also the trait that had led him to Team Ant, and it was the trait that led him to having his daughter.

He couldn’t regret his impulsiveness, not when it had resulted in Cassie.

She was his world, the hope that had literally pulled him out of the quantum realm. When he was with her, he was the best version of himself: he would be so filled with love, he’d swear he could feel it shining out of him. Cassie, of course, was a sun all by herself.

More than his superheroing, more than any of his engineering successes of the past, his family remained the most important thing in the world to him. He’d throw himself in and out of quantum space forever if it would mean that Cassie could grow up happy.

So, despite not regretting what he _ did _, he regretted doing it, if only because knowing her dad was stuck in his home for two years had made Cassie cry.

He didn’t regret any of his actions for himself; he regretted them for her.

That didn’t mean it wasn’t the most profoundly boring, mind numbing experience of his life. Whatever was going on out in the world, he only got the perspective he heard from TV. Who the hell knew what Hope and Hank were up to? Probably some kind of cool-ass adventures, he’d bet.

Super tiny, high energy adventures that would never get caught on camera for the morning news. Exploits that he didn’t get to hear about _ at all _, because Hope held her grudges with both fists. He was allowed a (definitely bugged) phone during house arrest, but that didn’t matter much anyway—she hadn’t even tried to reach out after the news covered his plea bargain.

Contacts he actually used included the dickish officer that checked up on him, Luis, his ex-wife and her fiance, and his literal child daughter. Hope had either blocked his number or managed to ignore a truly irritating amount of calls and texts. He left a message each time, usually the typical ‘I’m so sorry please take me back’ bullshit you’d expect, but he had no idea if she even bothered to listen to them.

Like a sad dog waiting for its owner to walk in the door, Scott made sure to watch the news diligently for signs of Team Ant related activity, any signs at all. It may not be likely for the micro-sized missions to be caught on camera, but if, say, a building with unbreakable security had an unseen break-in, well. As far as he knew, there weren’t any active invisible vigilantes, and that left ones that were extremely difficult to see.

Pathetic? Of course, but Scott had little pride left after letting his daughter ride around on his back like a ruthless horse jockey in front of his court-appointed attorney. He was completely aware of how hopeless and needy his TV habits were.

Pride never stopped him from being his true, stupid self.

The channel he was watching that morning wasn’t featuring anything particularly Ant-adjacent. A news anchor was covering gangs, and how _ your child could be in one! _ and it really wasn’t anything that Team Ant would bother to take on. In fact, it mostly looked like the typical scare-mongering, middle class bull that infected the morning news. 

Preschool gang recruitment ended her story with a stern warning about talking to your child about violence, and another anchor—an older man with gray hair and a strict face—gained the camera’s focus. His tone was a complete shift from the matronly chiding of the woman before.

Unsmiling, face grim, angry-anchor picked up at gang violence and shot in another direction completely.

“Police warn area residents of increased violence between feuding gangs. Members of a gang known for human trafficking have been going missing, or in two notable cases, turning up in an alley _ headless _.”

Headless? Huh. That seemed a little heavy-handed, even for the shit the gangs in San Fran tended to get up to.

“...these bodies displayed signs of a struggle, with long gang tags—which look like claw or bite marks—found across the victims’ bodies…”

Scott wasn’t eating anything, but he felt like he was going to choke regardless.

Bite marks. Bite marks! Suddenly his mind flew back to a conversation he’d had with Hope over a year ago, before he’d ran off with Captain America. The footage of some massive _ thing _with giant teeth and intimidating muscles flinging itself around the city that their camera ants had caught on tape.

It was just like Luis had told him—that thing was targeting gang members. Even over a year ago, when he had first told Scott the story, people on the underside of society knew that something big was eating people. Seeing a monster in the city, obviously huge and vicious-looking even on screen, had been enough to convince Scott to look into it, but what had Hope said?

_ “You’d think if something like this was eating people, we’d hear about it. Or see some of the evidence.” _

Well, grim-faced reporter was here to deliver, a whole year later: evidence in the form of at least two headless bodies. They could dress it up as ‘gang tags’ as much as they liked, but having seen what was likely their culprit on screen, Scott knew those markings weren’t just signatures.

The thing they’d caught on tape had some wicked teeth, and he’d bet his TV anything with teeth like that had some claws to go with it.

The news anchor was talking about how to go about reporting suspicious activity, the part of the news that normally made Scott zone out in boredom, but now it had him scrambling for a piece of paper. Phone numbers for the police assigned to the case joined other scribbled notes mentioned by the reporter.

Calling in, according to the stern man, could be completely anonymous. Scott was counting on that personally, given that his reputation left a lot to be desired.

As soon as the reporter had wrapped up his story, Scott had his phone to his ear with the number for the tip line ringing. His thoughts were racing, thinking back over the ominous hulking monster that they’d only seen for a few moments, but which had left such an impression of fear on him that it still clawed its way to the front of his thoughts an entire year later.

“...Hello?”

With a jolt, he realized he’d gotten lost in his thoughts, all caught up on the shadow-monster. He fumbled over his words for a second, thinking of what he wanted to say.

“Hi, uh, hey,” he started, which wasn’t the best way to call into a tip hotline. The silence on the other end of the line made it clear that the woman who’d picked up was thinking the same thing.

“I’m calling in a tip,” he blurted, “about the bodies, and the missing gang members.”

That had her attention. He could practically hear her inner monologue focus in, and in the background he heard a whole lot of typing. “Excellent. May I ask who this is?”

“I was, uh, hoping to make the tip anonymously,” he stuttered. Which, great, this call was definitely not painting him in the best light.

“That’s not a problem, sir. What information do you have for us?”

Scott’s hand was white-knuckled on his phone. He opened his mouth to respond, and then thought exactly about what he was going to say. Here was an anonymous stranger, calling a police hotline with a random tip about a big dark monster with giant teeth that goes around at night and eats people.

There was no way to make it sound not-insane. Bracing himself for the reaction, he got it over with: “I’m aware this is going to sound crazy, so hang in there for me. About a year ago, a colleague and I captured this thing on film—”

“Thing?”

“Right, this thing… well, it was a _ monster _, there’s really no other word for it. Huge, made of muscle, giant teeth. And I know, I sound absolutely insane and you don’t have time for conspiracy theories, but hear me out, because we have actual evidence of this thing!”

The woman on the other end of the line was definitely convinced he was full of shit. The humm she gave in response to this description was one of the polite sounds made to mad men rambling on street corners.

“What sort of evidence would you be able to present to us?”

“We have it on film swinging around the city,” he said, hurrying to get the information out. “And, well, I wouldn’t be able to present it to you, exactly, because I’m under house arrest.”

The typing in the background went quiet. “So you have footage of a _ ‘monster,’” _she said disbelievingly, the air quotes audible, “but you’re arrested and can’t provide the evidence.”

Scott’s brain caught up with his actions as he realized his biggest problem: 

He didn’t have the clip of the monster. 

Hope did, on some hard drive probably now buried away in her ‘don’t think about Scott’ pile. Hope, who wasn’t responding to any of Scott’s calls. Even if he wanted to try to reach out to her in person, he was also still under god damned house arrest, so: Hope, who was physically definitely not at his house and thus was no help to him in this situation.

The woman on the other end of the line was sighing. She sounded exasperated and annoyed, and it killed Scott that he knew she was completely right. “Sir,” she sighed, “if you’re going to make claims like that, we’re going to need _ proof— _”

Scott hung up.

With a long-suffering, self-directed groan, he buried his head in his hands. He’d _ tried _ , damn it, he wanted to do something! Team Ant could do something—hell, they _ may _be doing something, for all he knew—but they could also be occupied with something else entirely, such as, oh, our ex-friend came back from the supposedly inescapable quantum realm, no big deal, let’s look at gang violence!

He dropped his head from his hands to the table with a loud _ thunk _. Then, because he was an idiot that didn’t even think about the fact that he had no actual evidence himself, he thunked his head onto the table a couple more times. It hurt, but he bitterly thought he had it coming.

The suspicions he had could be completely wrong. Maybe it was an entirely different monster biting off heads, or hell, maybe the news was right and it was violent posturing on the part of gang turmoil. But Scott’s intuition was screaming at the figure from their footage. His instinct, stupid as it was, typically wasn’t wrong for things like this.

...So what, Scott? he thought. What was he going to do about it? He had a whole entire _ year _ left of house arrest. If he was completely convinced that he was right, utterly dead set on getting this info to Hope and trying to figure this mystery out, he could always break his house arrest in pursuit of taking down a monster.

Assuming he survived that—because, remembering the teeth and the apparent strength of that thing, it seemed like a pretty real possibility that he may _ not _ survive—he’d feel good about taking down a threat for a few hours. Then, he’d head home to celebrate with Cassie and be greeted by dozens of officers swarming in with handcuffs.

If he got shut away again for violating house arrest, that would be it. He wouldn’t get any sort of plea bargain a second time. He’d be closed off again, miss out on years on Cassie’s life.

Losing his chance to stay with Cassie again was where Scott drew the line. This was going to gnaw at him for weeks to come, knowing that he may possibly have seen the monster that was killing off gang members. His intuition would be bellowing in the back of his mind for days, fixated on what he could be doing.

He’d just have to shut it out. Focus on other things, which was hard enough to do on house arrest, but he’d find a way. Maybe he’d take up drumming, something nice and loud to drown out the doubt. Man, house arrest was making him dramatic.

Parts of Scott wanted to break the mundanity and take action, but Cassie was always his top priority.

For his family, he could wait.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in this chapter: what to expect, when no one is expecting you.
> 
> thank you for all the kind comments! i'm trying some f o r m a t t i n g in this chapter for multimedia elements, so i hope it makes sense to y'all. seeing multimedia done well in fics always makes me go wild.

**[Cryptid Sightings](google.com)** @dailycryptidsightings • 2h  
The elusive San Francisco cryptid ‘Lethal Protector’ was finally spotted by one of our California followers! These are the only pictures available online so far.  
**[PHOTOSET IMAGE 1:** a blurry black form with white eyes, reflective like a cat’s, peaks over a rooftop; **IMAGE 2:** a humanoid-shaped shadow rushes past the viewer, fuzzy and indistinct in motion.]  
26 Replies 1.7k Retweets 3.1k Likes

** [Monica luvs memes](google.com)** @umonica992 • 3h  
**_replying to @dailycryptidsightings_**  
Finally!!! i’ve been SAYING this thing is real but no one believed me! These pics are so cool how the hell did you get them?

**[True Skeptic Steve](google.com)** @logicplusoccult • 3h  
**_replying to @dailycryptidsightings_**  
Obviously fake. In the age of megapixel phones you’re telling me we can only find two blurry pictures of this thing? Look for pixels around its edges for clear signs of editing.

**[Lewd Catt](google.com)** @cattknowswhatudid • 4h  
**_replying to @dailycryptidsightings_**  
Yea I sent this in. Me n the girls I talk to on the street know ALL about this thing. Its been taking out the worst dudes in the city lol. Cops r looking for it but we aren’t saying shit!

**[gaykids for jesus](google.com)** @hanksonlygayacct • 4h  
**_replying to @dailycryptidsightings_**  
me running out of a room after I turn the lights off

**[Lewd Catt](google.com)** @cattknowswhatudid • 1h  
Ever since my pics blew up ppl have been @ing me for more details on the lethal protector n I’m just letting yall know everyone on the street LOVES this thing (1/?) [#SanFranCryptid](google.com)  
12 Replies 847 Retweets 1.1k Likes

**[Lewd Catt](google.com)** @cattknowswhatudid • 1h  
Like yes its killed a bunch of ppl, but all those guys?? Girls on the street KNOW these dudes, they’re the scummiest shittiest ppl around, they harass us left n right and the cops never did shit!! (2/?) [#SanFranCryptid](google.com)

**[Lewd Catt](google.com)** @cattknowswhatudid • 1h  
Far as we’re concerned the lethal protector is handing out justice to ppl that the law won’t /can’t catch. Is it morally wrong? Probably but when ur poor / trans / poc the law doesnt serve u anyway. (3/?) [#SanFranCryptid](google.com)

**[Lewd Catt](google.com)** @cattknowswhatudid • 1h  
The whole system is fucked. This thing is doing more for broke ppl in shitty areas than any cop fucks i know of. There’s a REASON we call it a protector! Care abt victims half as much as a dead abuser, smh (4/4) [#SanFranCryptid](google.com)

**[Julia D.](google.com)** @jullsxmac • 2h  
Anyone else notice that the “Lethal Protector” has only been targeting guys convicted of assault/trafficking w evidence? And we’re supposed to think this thing is a threat? 🤔 What’s that tell you about people in power? [#SanFranCryptid](google.com)  
17 Replies 1.1k Retweets 2.2k Likes

**[Thinking Free Speech](google.com)** @mattwithTFP • 5h  
**_replying to @jullsxmac _**  
In case you’re not aware, that’s considered vigilante justice and is ILLEGAL. Laws exist for a reason. This is obviously FAKE but even if it was real, it would be a CRIMINAL. [#SanFranCryptid](google.com)

**[Cryptid USA](google.com)** @cryptidUSA • 1h  
The photos posted by @dailycryptidsightings are still unconfirmed. Their source is also suspected of changing details to fit an agenda; for now the SF-area ‘Lethal Protector’ will NOT be added to our cryptid encyclopedia.  
38 Replies 1.9k Retweets 4.5k Likes

[**Ya boi Jake**](google.com) @jjaake420 • 2h  
**_replying to @cryptidUSA_**  
Oh yea well if its fake then what happened to my boy Logan huh?? He just go missing or what?

[**SandraSays**](google.com) @sandrareads • 3h  
_**replying to @jjaake420**_  
Based on your literally incriminating profile and past Tweets—if he’s anything like you, I’d bet he’s currently in prison. For y’know, being a major drug dealer and exploiting women. 👀

* * *

Perched like a bird of prey over an alleyway, Venom peered down at one of their targets.

Logan Powell, a registered sex offender and veteran member of a local gang known for targeting children for recruitment, was blissfully unaware of the adversary watching over him. Laughing and grasping at his colleague, he gestured broadly at their supply.

Drugs, the hard stuff. Logan liked to target those trying to go through recovery, those at their most tired and vulnerable. Easy targets, he seemed to think. Drugs weren’t all he dabbled in, though; Logan also was a key distributor of guns and weaponry to guys on repeat offenders lists.

No man was too despicable: if they offered cash—or Bitcoin, Logan was a pretty digital savvy guy—Logan would hand over whatever they were looking for, no questions asked. He liked to think of himself as a business mogul.

Venom liked to think of him as _ meat. _

Their stomach growled, roiling in hunger. As of the past month, they’d upped their hunting from once every other week to once every other day. Hunting had been a delicious luxury, before, but now it was much more of a necessity. The chemicals they needed just couldn’t be found anywhere else. 

The symbiote had expected as much, but Eddie was taken aback by the strength of the cravings. As small as their child currently was, still more of a fetus than anything else, it demanded a fuck ton from its parents.

Logan waved goodbye to his colleagues, starting down the alley to where he’d parked his obnoxious orange car. The other two men he’d been with, both equally as scummy but not their current priority, rushed back out of the alley, hopping into a sleek black sports car parked right outside the curb.

Finally their prey was alone. Not that they couldn’t take on three men—they could, easily, especially low-tech thugs like these guys. Those men wouldn’t have the chance to scream before Venom would swoop in, jaws unhinged wide to _ bite _ deep into tissue, severing their vocal chords and taking them all down in one hit.

From their post above their target, Venom felt their mouth watering. It was a nice thought, to swallow up three targets at once, devour the scum of their city, but they needed to keep up _ some _kind of restraint. One target at a time. It was more Eddie than symbiote thinking that, but it was a particularly stringent thought.

After all, they both had more to worry about than before.

Nothing showed in their current state. Venom, the two of them come together in symbiosis with liquid black strength, was the same as they’d ever been. Their form was still corded muscle and teeth, but Eddie…

Well, he was starting to _ show _. That was the word Eddie used, anyway, for the small pouch that had gathered in his abdomen where their child was growing. Apparently most pregnant people didn’t start showing like this until later on in their pregnancy, but their child had a hell of an appetite, growing more swiftly than a human child, and Eddie’s stomach already pressed out, just slightly.

The symbiote thought it was beautiful; Eddie thought he looked bloated, like he needed to shit.

Eddie was thankful nothing showed when they formed Venom. Atop the rooftop they’d picked to stake out their target, their form shifted in anticipation. Venom knew they were intimidating in their massive, muscular bulk. When they landed in front of prey, tongue lolling and teeth on full display, horror flooded its body, spilling into every limb with rattling nerves. Flavoring enhancing the prey’s taste.

Their target dug into his jean pockets, leaning back against his car and flicking on a lighter. Instinctively Venom felt their body coil, though the flame was much too small to do any real damage given that they’d survived an explosion. Still, it was a potential threat to take note of—with Eddie’s state being what it was, the symbiote wasn’t willing to take many risks.

Hunched over his lighter, Logan inhaled his cigarette to life, swallowing up smoke deep into his lungs and blowing out a large drag. Unfortunate, that habit. It tended to sink into perfectly good lungs, rendering them drippy like overripe fruit and sour with tar. When they bit into their target’s chest, they’d have to take care to discard those bits—what a waste.

_ Can’t help it, _ Eddie consoled them. _ That kind of shit is especially bad for pregnant people. Plenty of other meat on that one, though. _

There certainly was: a bulky upper body, rich filled-out thighs, and a slightly bulging midriff meant their target would make a nice filling meal. Disregarding his fucked up lungs, this scumbag was a delicacy. A walking, talking, drug-dealing woman-beating buffet for Venom and their growing child to enjoy.

** _Even the most worthless lives can mean something, in the end_ ** , the symbiote agreed. ** _Being our meal will be the most worthwhile thing this man has done in all his years._ **

_ You’re damn right, darling _.

Now relaxed from the tobacco, Logan leaned back against the side of his car, puffing clouds of smoke into the dark. This was the state Venom had been waiting for. Lowered defenses and the assurance that one was alone made the perfect environment for a surprise attack.

Venom crouched back against their haunches, legs coiled up as they readied to pounce. With their strength gathered in their hind limbs, they sprang from the rooftop, tongue spilling behind them and teeth shining in their menacing grin.

They landed on the ground in front of Logan with a muffled _ thud _ . Quiet landings belied their real weight, and even as he scrambled for his weapon their target wasn’t prepared for the sight before him. With a shocked, choked _ gasp, _Logan fumbled his grip on his gun, fingers slipping in fear.

A black tendril shot out, quicker than he could recover, and crushed the gun in its grasp. Metallic parts clanged as they hit the cement. Baffled, their target’s hand remained raised in an awkward grip, clutching at empty air like he could summon his gun back from its scattered parts.

Seeing this, Venom laughed darkly, mouth split in a grin and all of their vicious teeth on display. Their target gave off a wave of fear pheromones, the salt of his anxious sweat tinging the edges of his scent. This was Venom’s favorite part of a hunt: terror always made their prey taste so much _ richer _, a combination of adrenaline and panic and dread soaking the meat of its body in a delicious broth.

“What—what the _ fuck _,” Logan yelped. He scrambled backwards at his car, his lighter and cigarette long forgotten on the ground beside him. Frantically his hands grappled with the handle, but he had yet to unlock his door.

“Greetings, Logan,” Venom said, their rumbling voice low. During hunts like these, they liked to keep themselves somewhat discreet, their hunts swift and efficient. After playing with their food a bit, to taste.

As the manifestation of Eddie and his other, Venom was (and was aware they were) theatrically melodramatic. 

“Get the fuck _ back, _ man,” Logan rasped. Without a weapon, his hands formed useless fists in front of him. “The fuck _ are _ you? The fuck do you know my name?”

“Not a man. We researched you,” they responded simply. They prowled around Logan, stalking their prey like a panther, threatening circles that moved closer to the man with each pass.

“Researched me?”

Venom narrowed their gaze. “Yes. Sell a lot of drugs, Logan. A lot of weapons to bad people. You hurt women—”

“This is about _ that _? They fuckin’ had it coming!”

With a snarl, Venom grabbed their target by the throat, holding him up with one hand against the side of his car. He scrabbled at their grasp, hands catching futilely at the massive paw curled around his neck.

“_ Scum, _” they hissed, spittle flying past their prey’s face. “You know what you have done. You know why we have come for you.”

Logan was choking. His voice was raspy and desperate as he pleaded with the monster in front of him.

“Look, I… Hurt some girls, yeah. But.” He hacked. “‘M not a bad guy. Dunno what you _ are _but. I swear, I won’t be hurting… anyone else.”

Venom listened to this supplicating, this pathetic excuse for a confession, with disgust and hunger. No real remorse was expressed at all, nor could they scent any true regret. This target was guilty. All the men they had hunted were guilty, one way or another.

These men would find their salvation at the bottom of Venom’s stomach.

Between the iron grip of their clawed hand, Logan was starting to turn blue. His voice, rambling with excuses, was turning hoarse, and his feet were kicking helplessly at the creature holding him aloft.

They were lingering at this point: Venom liked to devour their meal before they could make too much noise, be it loud begging or screaming, since they were trying to lay low. It was about time to put this filth to rest.

“You won’t be hurting anyone else,” they said, not a question. Briefly they lightened their grip on the man’s throat, making a show of considering this untrue possibility.

It was difficult to nod one’s head under even the relaxed grip of a giant, clawed hand, but Logan fervently attempted to. Shaky, uneven nods hit the top of their hand as their target rushed to assuage them.

“I swear,” he rasped, voice ruined. His eyes were wide and pleading, fixed on the wide alien eyes above him. The hands weakly hitting at their chest were trembling too hard to make a fist. “God, no one else, please let me go. I’ll be better—"

“Yes, you will be.”

And with that, Venom spread their jaw wide. An endless mouthful of razor-blade fangs reflected in their prey’s eyes briefly before Venom lunged forward. In an instant, they had severed the pleading man’s head from his body.

Without a head to grip, the body fell to the ground like a sack of garbage. Decapitated and limp, the corpse went briefly ignored as Venom savored the _ rush _ of rich, exquisite chemical nutrients. Phenethylamine, the most prominent and important, with overtones of adrenaline. The pituitary gland was a burst of bright flavor, popping on their shared tongue like a ripe tomato. Freshly killed, its amygdala still zapped through with lightning connections, most profoundly and deliciously that of _ fear. _

Venom braced a hand on the dead man’s car and _ moaned _, overwhelmed by ecstasy. These were the tastes, the sustenance, that they’d needed, craved, that had woken Eddie up in the middle of the night this past month with undeniable insistence. Deep within them, in Eddie’s womb, their child grew stronger with each meal.

_ Hold on, love, _ Eddie urged them. Despite the exhilaration, his attention was zeroed in on the corpse lying pathetically on the damp concrete. _ I think we want the body this time too. _

Interpreting the needs of their child was difficult—usually it was satisfied with the brain, but once a week or so it tended to demand more. Eddie wasn’t sure what it was wanting from the rest of the body. Calories? Something in the blood or the hormones?

He wasn’t sure, but he refused to deny their child anything it needed, even if it was currently a mishmash of hybrid tissues. To his and the symbiote’s surprise, Eddie seemed to better interpret what their child needed. Maybe it was some deeply buried matronly instinct, Eddie had humored.

The symbiote had been slightly stung; they’d expected to feel just as connected to their growing spawn as they felt to Eddie. That _ Eddie _ ended up being the one to understand their child was simultaneously delightful and envious. They took solace in the knowledge that, being a passenger in Eddie’s body themself, they were able to view their growing child directly, monitoring its growth with joy.

With Eddie’s help, though, they swiftly caught on to the craving steering their attention. Still warm, what before looked like left-overs was a siren: the carcass rapidly cooling on the pavement wasn’t meant to go to waste.

Venom moved quickly to devour the rest of the body, wanting to be gone from the scene before the distinct, wet tearing sounds alerted any potential passerbys. With a handful of ravenous bites the corpse was devoured. Legs, torso, guts and all were slurped up, stew and meat, and swallowed hungrily.

Nothing to be done about the puddles of blood that splattered the concrete and car behind them, but Venom wasn’t worried about that. Let the scum of their city know what had happened, let them see the evidence of their power.

* * *

Eddie’s pregnancy had the symbiote roiling with possessiveness, a side effect of Eddie’s own hormones and body chemistry going wild.

They knew what Eddie needed, but that wasn’t enough; they wanted to _ be what _ he needed. The two of them had researched pregnancy before conceiving (they didn’t go into this _ entirely _ clueless and horny), but their pregnancy was obviously far from typical. Who knew if an insatiable appetite for brains was healthy for their baby?

Also, he had to piss all the fuckin’ time, and their kid wasn’t even _ that _ big. Was that normal?

(His tits weren’t going to grow back, were they?)

His other, as much as they enjoyed the increased brawn of their diet, mirrored Eddie’s concerns, in their own way. They’d spawned before, spill off symbiotes that they’d felt little connection to, but this was already so, so different. For one, humans had to gestate for _ months _, which was extremely impractical.

Being half-Klyntar, their child was already growing quicker than a normal pregnancy; according to their research, a pregnancy bump didn’t usually begin showing until closer to three months in.

The symbiote didn’t want to hear outsider opinions on their bond—no human, no other being, could understand the cell-deep and soul-deep connection between them and Eddie. They felt similarly about their growing child. Eddie understood this, but a third opinion, one that was at least sympathetic if not understanding, couldn’t hurt, Eddie urged them.

At Eddie’s behest and the symbiote’s hesitant agreement, the two of them decided to confide in Dan. As a surgeon, according to Eddie, he was probably the most qualified person to help them.

* * *

“Pregnancy?” Dan asked, half-distracted from where he was going through a file. Eddie leaned casually against the door of his office, like his alien partner wasn’t on edge right under his skin. “I’m not qualified for that, Eddie. You’ll want to get her to an obstetrician.” 

Back tense against the door, Eddie said, “Oh. Right.”

On his left ring finger, his thumb anxiously pressed at the sleek black band his other had taken to forming when they went out among other humans. Once the symbiote had learned that a ring symbolized the permanent bond between two people in a marriage, they’d insisted on forming their own for him to wear.

It tended to deter potential advances; with Eddie’s current state and his other’s flaring possessiveness, displaying his taken status was a charity to society. Flirtatious admirers that had backed off at the sight of it had unknowingly saved themselves from a jealous symbiote. 

Dan seemed to pick up on Eddie’s awkward hesitation. He set down the papers he was looking at, filing them away carefully into one of his many meticulously organized folders. Attention secured, he leaned back himself against one of his enormous filing cabinets. Being in a white coat and lined slacks, trying to look relaxed in that kind of pose mostly ended up making him look awkward.

“I’m getting that there’s something you’re not telling me about this woman,” he said, purposefully casual. “I know we’re friends, and this can stay as-friends, but let me remind you that whatever you tell me can remain confidential.”

In other words: the last time you hid something, it put everyone in danger and resulted in your acquisition of an alien parasite-boyfriend. So fess up, Eddie, as your friend and as someone who has a vested interest in public health.

“There is something I’m not saying,” Eddie started, hedging carefully. His other stirred anxiously under his sternum. “This pregnancy… we don’t know what to expect. It’s not exactly. Normal.” 

Dancing around the topic, slowly edging closer to the truth, seemed to be the only way Eddie could breach it. Between his own unavoidable dysphoria and his other’s defensiveness, talking about it directly felt almost _ base _.

Expression still purposefully neutral, like Eddie would shatter into a confession, Dan asked, “Eddie. Did you get this woman pregnant?”

Eddie stared blankly at Dan, uncomprehending. Was that a joke? At the fleeting idea that Dan was making fun of their pregnancy and of Eddie’s physiology, the symbiote swelled up in suppressed rage. Eddie capped those feelings; no, with how deliberate Dan was being in his current bedside manner, it was serious. Did Anne not—? 

“There is no woman.”

The neutral expression pinched up in confusion. “...You were just discussing the woman you—”

“There is no woman because _ I _ am the one that’s pregnant, Dan.”

Silence fell. Dan’s eyes were wide, peering at Eddie like he’d announced that Dan was knocked up himself. After a few painful seconds of this, during which Eddie felt his other linger closely under his skin, ready to lash out, Dan cleared his throat and shifted his now uncomfortable-looking position against the filing cabinet. He looked like he was about to break Eddie’s heart.

“I don’t know, hm. What’s going on with you and Venom or what sort of miscommunication happened, but, Eddie,” he said, voice straining with sincerity, “a positive pregnancy test in men can indicate testicular cancer.”

This whole situation was way too fucking ridiculous. Eddie burst into somewhat panicked laughter, so hard tears pooled in his eyes, at the serious look on Dan’s face and the words he was saying and the confused-relieved-funny knowledge that Anne had obviously never disclosed Eddie’s trans status to Dan, and he must pass_ pretty fucking well _, huh?

The symbiote, feeling this profoundly disorienting humor second-hand but not really understanding it, wrapped up around Eddie’s abdomen. With a swirl of black and white, their head formed out from Eddie’s chest. Eddie’s manic state had them prickly and protective.

“Don’t understand why _ you _don’t understand, Dan,” they hissed. Dan had startled at their sudden formation, face tilting down to meet their own glaring eyes. “Thought doctors are supposed to understand the mechanics behind reproduction. I haven’t been on Earth for longer than a year, yet I have managed to grasp them perfectly myself.”

Dan blinked at V like they were speaking in another language entirely. Then, after a few moments of flustered blinking, his gaze darted between their narrowed eyes, the clawed black hands bracing Eddie’s stomach, and Eddie’s exhilarated face. His mouth opened and closed a couple of times soundlessly before he spoke.

“You mean _you’re_ _pregnant_?”

Eddie slumped down the wall, knees giving up, but his other caught him before he flopped onto the floor. Wrapping his legs in black, they stood Eddie up and awkwardly maneuvered him into a chair in front of Dan’s desk. They flopped Eddie into the chair unceremoniously. Eddie stared into space past Dan’s bewildered face.

“Yeah.”

This answer was, obviously, not exactly satisfactory. Poor Dan looked like he was trying to read answers in the dull mien of Eddie’s face. V was getting a bit concerned for their host, the sudden shift from humor to exhaustion catching them by surprise. This pregnancy made Eddie such a reactive brew of feelings, they struggled to keep up with what meant what.

Dan finally seemed to gather the words and the courage to ask what he clearly was dying to ask. “You’re pregnant,” he started. “Is this because of Venom? Is he making this possible somehow?”

Eddie snorted. The symbiote buzzed with the same humor, and they couldn’t resist saying what Eddie was thinking. “Easy. When a sperm or other comparable genetic material fertilizes an egg—”

“Those aren’t the details he needs,” Eddie cut them off, exasperated but amused. “It happened like a normal pregnancy, because I’m trans and I have the parts for it.”

Spitting it out like that was a little blunt, but it would have to do. God forbid Dan start looking for alien eggs hidden in Eddie’s esophagus or some shit. He was going to have to come out to Dan at some point if they wanted his help, anyway.

The poor man obviously knew he’d put his foot in his mouth. Dan’s face went bright pink.

“Oh,” he said. “Oh. I. Am _ so _sorry, Eddie, I didn’t know. I didn’t mean to imply—”

“It’s cool,” Eddie interrupted, because the last thing he needed was his ex’s cis boyfriend enumerating how he was totally accepting. He’d heard plenty of that from every non-douchebag doctor and ex, thanks, didn’t need that here.

Now that he knew that he was dealing with, Dan seemed to settle into the seriousness of what Eddie was saying. The atmosphere was still tense and awkward, but the other man took it in stride, ignoring his own gaffe to focus on the matter at hand. He peered at Eddie’s stomach with scientific curiosity.

“So, while you being transgender explains how you’re pregnant,” he began, eyes tracking V’s possessive brace at Eddie’s abdomen, “it doesn’t explain how—I’m assuming—_ Venom _ managed to impregnate someone of another species.”

V bristled. “Don’t need to assume,” they hissed. They didn’t seem very pleased at Dan only ‘assuming’ that they were the other parent. “No one else touches Eddie that way.”

“Let’s not start delving into that,” Eddie said, face pinching. Dan looked like he was just as uninterested in hearing about V’s sexual prowess as Eddie was to explain it. “I don’t get the details, but my other made their own genetic material, basically. One that’s compatible with mine, like how they’re compatible with me.”

Dan ogled the symbiote with clear awe. “That’s… that’s unprecedented,” he exhaled. “We’ve never been able to cross-breed two completely different species like—”

“I’m not a fuckin’ science experience,” Eddie bit out. “Please don’t talk about us like that, okay?”

Thankfully Dan seemed to catch himself, grimacing. “Shit. Sorry, Eddie, I didn’t mean to imply that. It’s just, this is so incredible!”

“So, do you think you could help us?”

Expression still eager, Dan smiled ruefully. “Ah, well, I still need to reiterate that I’m not really qualified to assess a pregnancy. But given the circumstances.” He gestured to the ribbon of black tendrils surrounding Eddie’s midriff. “I’ll have to review a book on obstetrics.”

Eddie exhaled in relief. “Thank fuck. Even if you can’t do _ much _, it’s better than nothing.” He ran a hand through his hair, the short blond strands sticking up on end.

“I suppose a good enough place to start would be any symptoms you’re experiencing. You’re obviously worried about something, right?” 

Symptoms. Now they were getting into the territory that Eddie actually wanted to talk about. His hands dropped to where V’s were cupping the slight rounding of his abdomen, the symbiote reforming their own fingers to entwine with his own.

“Well, some of it’s normal, I think. I have to piss, like, all the time, and I get queasy in the morning…”

“All relatively normal aspects of a pregnancy,” Dan assured. He nodded along to Eddie’s halting description. Eddie’s fingers twitched in the symbiote’s grip.

“I get these, these very intense cravings…” Eddie said slowly, hesitating.

“Also very normal.”

Eddie’s voice caught in his throat before he could describe what exactly he was _ craving _ to Dan.

It was one thing for rumors to fly around about scumbags disappearing off the streets, it was another entirely for Eddie to blatantly admit that he and his other were repeat cannibals.

Anne and Dan were great friends to have; they were as understanding of his other as any humans could be, they laughed along when Eddie told them stories about V’s alien impulses, they didn’t judge Eddie for being in a relationship with a body-inhabiting alien. When V was in Anne, they even bit the heads off of a couple of people.

But to come out and confess that he and his other had been regularly devouring whole people was another thing entirely. They didn’t just attack in self-defense: they _ hunted. _ Could their human friends stomach it?

Before he could make up his mind one way or another, there was a knock at Dan’s door. Eddie jolted in his seat, his other whirling back inside him in an instant. After giving himself a cursory pat down to make sure the symbiote was completely hidden, he shot Dan a thumbs up.

“Come in,” Dan called, shifting back into professionalism. He sat himself behind his desk, giving Eddie an apologetic look. “I’ll send them away in just a second,” he assured him.

“It’s fine,” Eddie started, half ready to abandon this discussion entirely and leave. He started standing up to leave Dan to his work, but then the person at the door came in, and Eddie knocked his knees painfully on Dan’s desk in surprise.

“Hi, honey,” Anne called into the room, shutting the door closed with an elbow. Her arms were balancing two very full takeout bags. “I know you’re in the middle of a long shift, so I thought I’d bring you something to….”

Anne’s voice trailed off, losing her focus when she caught sight of Eddie. He was frozen awkwardly half-standing, a hand braced on his knee in front of Dan’s desk.

“Hi, Anne,” he said weakly.

“Hey Eddie,” she said, voice noticeably confused. She shuffled in further, setting the takeout down on Dan’s desk. That settled, she took the other chair in front of Dan’s desk across from where Eddie was strangely crouch-standing.

“So, not that it’s not good to see you…” she dragged out, “but why were you here visiting Dan?”

Eddie was suspended in his odd position, torn on what he wanted to say. Dan was looking at him in concern, mouth opening to redirect Anne, but Eddie shook his head roughly. Dropping back down in the chair, he heaved a deep breath.

It was going to be all the more awkward to break the news to Anne. When the two of them were together and planning their future, he’d never planned on anything like getting knocked up himself. Ever. He knew Anne wouldn’t think less of him for it, but old dysphoria was rearing its ugly head.

“So,” he said, voice breaking a little bit, “I’m pregnant.”

Anne stared blankly.

“Really. I’m pregnant, V and I are having a baby.”

At that, Anne wheezed a loud laugh, glancing incredulously at Eddie’s midsection. “Okay okay, seriously—”

Eddie’s other reemerged in a brief whirlwind, wrapping tendrils furiously across Eddie’s chest, face emerging from his upper back with an angry growl. They bared their teeth at Anne.

“_Not_ _funny_! Not a joke! Eddie is worried for our baby so we agreed to see Dan for help, but neither of you take us seriously!”

The symbiote vibrated angrily, a rumble against Eddie’s organs. He grimaced and rested a hand placatingly on V’s mass.

“It’s _ alright _, love, they don’t mean it like that. It’s just really fuckin’ unexpected, that’s all.”

Anne had gone full lawyer pokerface with the confirmation that they weren’t joking. It seemed she didn’t know how to react to the news that Eddie was actually, really, apparently pregnant. She stared placidly at V’s scowl, then at Eddie’s stomach.

“Sorry,” she breathed. She shook her head, dispelling the cool composure she’d adopted in the face of the symbiote’s anger. “Sorry, Eddie. Sorry, Venom.”

V was still scowling, displeased and frustrated with their friends’ disbelief, but they dropped their defensive posturing. They remained outside Eddie, insistent on being included in the conversation, wrapped stubbornly around him.

Anne watched this display with a curious look on her face. Maybe she was reflecting on her and Eddie’s past relationship and how they’d never considered Eddie carrying a child himself, maybe she was thinking about her own. For a moment she seemed caught up in her own head. Then she smiled, wide and honest at Eddie. 

“Congratulations, you two,” she said. With a quick glance at V’s reaction, she reached out to wrap Eddie in a firm hug.

Eddie smiled back helplessly. Moments like this, where he was reminded that this was real and he and V were going to have a family, and that they had a couple of reliable friends, he felt like everything in his sad old life had built up to this happiness.

“Thanks,” he said. He glanced back at Dan, resolve firming. “Actually, now that you both know, we have something to tell you.”

* * *

Having a defense lawyer and a surgeon on their side didn’t necessarily mean they were ready for anything, but he sure felt a lot more prepared after confiding in their friends about their, uh, dietary needs.

At first they looked on at Eddie in horror mixed with disgust, but they heard him out. That alone was more than a confession about being a violent cannibal really deserved. Eddie struggled through an explanation about how he could sense—in the back of his throat, an itch that was _ ravenous _ to be scratched—what the developing hybrid seemed to need.

All things considered, they’d reacted surprisingly well.

Very well. _ Concerningly _well, maybe, but that was what made them such good friends to a volatile pregnant guy and his alien partner.

“You need to be more aware of anything that could be left on the scene,” Anne had said. “I know you’re cleaning up the remains, Venom, but hair and fabric fibers are actually very reliable ways to trace someone back to a location.”

“As long as excess iron toxicity is still being filtered out by the liver, and Venom doesn’t notice any signs of a misfolding prion, I think you’ll be alright,” Dan had advised.

“...Good to know,” Eddie had nodded.

So yeah, maybe their friends’ morals were just as flexible as their own. A past Eddie probably would have been aghast at how quickly they went from disgust to acceptance, but a past Eddie also never saw himself pregnant with a half-alien baby, so.

Something to be said for letting go of the past, Eddie thought. He stared at his image in his bathroom mirror.

Eddie’s hand drifted to cup his stomach, the slight bump barely visible in his reflection. Gaze sharp, he scrutinized the skin there, imagining he could see through his skin into the organs underneath like his other could.

He didn’t regret any of this, no matter how violent. He didn’t regret being the one to carry their child either. If his other were to carry their child, they would be more symbiote than infant, and both of them wanted a child unlike anything they had ever spawned. Equally part host and part symbiote, like Venom.

As determined as he was to carry their child, Eddie couldn’t help but look at the image in his reflection and feel a twinge of distress. The padding on his stomach reminded him of his belly pre-transition, soft and curvy. 

He couldn’t avoid the reality that his body would change. When he was joking about his tits growing back, he absolutely wasn’t joking.

** _Don’t need to worry,_ ** his other calmed. ** _Still can control _ ** **our ** ** _body, even though I can’t affect our child. Don’t have to grow breasts if you don’t want them. Can keep you looking ‘male.’_ **

His dysphoria was such a nonissue in comparison to getting away with devouring criminals off the street. That didn’t stop it from mattering, deeply, to Eddie. Relief hit him like a wall of warm air, and he sighed heavily, shoulders relaxing and trembling.

“Thanks, love,” he murmured. The pregnancy really had him vulnerable, hunger and dysphoria and excitement and fear all tumbling together in a sharp tangled ball of emotions. It sat prickly and dense in his gut.

The symbiote moved swiftly inside him, warming his body from the inside like a capsized hug.

** _Doing so much, carrying our child, _ ** they said, voice profuse with love. ** _Can’t do much for our child myself, but I can do this for you._ **

“I couldn’t do _ any _of this without you. You’re holding me together, darling.”

** _You could. So strong, Eddie,_ ** they argued, firm in their belief.

“Don’t downplay how important you are in all of this,” Eddie grumbled, turning away back to their bed. He threw himself (carefully, on his back) onto the mattress, staring up at the glow-in-the-dark stars the symbiote had placed on the ceiling and walls. Street lights carried in through the cracks in their blinds, but the room was dim enough for the stars to coat everything in a green blush.

“We have to be in this together,” he mumbled, quiet like a secret. He curled up into their comforter, his other pooling out from his spine to spoon him like he wanted to be held. “It’s both of us or nothing, baby. Without you…”

He trailed off, sleepy, eyes shutting as he buried his face into a pillow. Over his skin, his other covered him like wool. They clung soft but unyielding to the planes of Eddie’s form, a defensive black layer against the dark.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *dusts off my laptop screen* owo what's this.  
...except not that. sorry for the delay—when life hits, it hits hard. i had a lot going on, but things have settled down a bit again, which means it's time to keep writing weird, escapist, alien porn fic. idk how regular updates are gonna be, and i may write a couple one-shots in between, but i love this fic and i'm gonna finish it. homo's honor.

There was a woman in Scott’s living room, and it wasn’t Hope.

Not that it _ had _ to be Hope. Just a few weeks ago, their team had managed to recover Janet from the quantum realm. Surprisingly lucid, Janet had taken to inserting herself into Team Ant’s life with unnerving ease, popping up at his and Luis’ shop more than once to offer her input on their business.

It was good input, frankly. The woman had a sharp mind beneath her warm exterior, and she didn’t hesitate to cut in where she saw fit. Guess a couple decades in another realm of existence will do that to you, but Scott also had a feeling she had been like that from the start. Explained where Hope got her edge from, since it definitely wasn’t her dad.

So, coming home to a surprise female presence wasn’t completely outside the realm of possibility. Janet hadn’t been so bold as to appear uninvited in his home quite yet, but hey, he was almost kind of dating her daughter so it wouldn’t be _ too _ inexplicable.

There was also Maggie, but the chances of her paying him a visit without Cassie being involved somehow was very, very slim. Not to mention, Maggie didn’t sneak in unannounced—she preferred to stomp her presence loudly into a room. And she would’ve texted, you know, like a normal person.

Maybe not a normal person? Scott’s mind skipped back to that creepy ghost girl they’d fought then helped while rescuing Janet. Now _ that _ was a girl that would drift into people’s homes, summarily scaring the living shit out of them. Except she had some kind of brown hair, didn’t she, kind of scraggly like a witch and _ man_, that girl really was eerie.

The bob of curly red hair in Scott’s living room disproved that theory pretty quickly. A long-winded sigh slid to Scott from its direction.

“Gonna keep standing there?” an unfamiliar voice called. “Because you’re not very good at being sneaky when you’re not shrunken down.”

“I wasn’t trying to sneak,” Scott protested, which was partially true. Not that he needed to prove himself to some invader in the first place. He stepped into the room, hand clenching around where the shrinking button for his suit would be.

Ambushed in his own home, and he didn’t even have his damn suit on.

The woman on his sofa (in his favorite spot on his sofa!) turned around, languid and liquid in her movements. She was dressed inconspicuously, a navy blue button up top and gray slacks, purposefully selected to blend in with a crowd, along with the wig that lay discarded on the cushion next to her. But her face was familiar to Scott, unforgettable.

“Holy shit! You’re the Black Widow! The one that went to DC to spill about the Nazis in the government!”

Scott gestured with his arms at her, like he was demonstrating an important point and not just emphasizing how much she did not belong in his living room. The Widow just stared at this display, unimpressed.

“There’s no ‘the.’ It’s just Black Widow,” she drawled. “And the rest of that claim wasn’t quite right either. It was about Hydra infiltrated SHIELD.”

“Oh, right, right. Still kind of Nazis in the government, though, right?”

Black Widow looked him over like she was analyzing different ways to take him out. She probably was, actually, and Scott didn’t blame her. Her unpainted nails drummed across the top ridge of Scott’s couch.

“Take a seat,” she ordered. Scott glanced at the couch she was sitting on, but despite her small stature, her presence filled the whole space. No way he was sitting down there.

She looked pointedly at the smaller chair across from the sofa. It wasn’t a request. Meekly, Scott shuffled down into the seat, intimidated and impressed at the same time.

“I’m here on business,” she said plainly. With her position on the sofa, she looked down at Scott more than metaphorically. He felt more like an ant under her gaze than he did in his suit.

“I haven’t talked with Cap since the whole Berlin thing,” he blurted. “Or any Avenger. It’s just been, you know, me and Hope.”

Shit. Did she already know about Hope, or was he dragging Hope into deeper trouble again? Black Widow hadn’t even asked, damn it.

The woman’s aloof expression didn’t change at Scott’s interjection. “We know,” she said.

“Oh, uh, good then. What’s this about, Black Widow?”

Her face scrunched up in displeasure. “Please, just call me Natasha,” she said. “Natasha Romanov. It’s all out in the public at this point. Calling me Black Widow to my face is a little too Justice League for what we have to talk about.”

Scott nodded, head whipping up and down like an eager trainee. His mind caught the word ‘we’ and hung on tight—he was being talked _ with, _ not talked _ to. _ “Got it. Natasha. What are we talking about, and who exactly is ‘we?’”

Natasha held Scott’s eyes for a pretty uncomfortable amount of time. He fought the urge to look away, since this was maybe some kind of important spy character assessment, but the tension in her face made him want to fold.

“Last year, you and your partner Hope caught something on camera,” she began, tracking Scott’s reaction to each word. Not that she needed to—at the mention of catching something on camera, all of Scott’s attention peaked into high alert.

Somehow he managed to bite back on his impulse to jump in and start blathering. With all the chaos of regaining Hope’s trust, rescuing her mother from the quantum realm, and fighting freaky ghost girls, he’d managed to push thoughts about the monster they’d filmed to the back of his mind. Rejoining Team Ant had been such a priority in his life, second only to his daughter.

The monster lurked behind his thoughts, but it had kept to the shadows. Now, Natasha was pulling it back out.

She went on. “You may have heard something about a cryptid trending in the area,” she said. “It’s been targeting people on the sexual offender registry, and they either end up losing their head, literally, or disappearing. SHIELD has good reason to believe this rumor isn’t just a rumor.”

Scott cleared his throat, his mouth dry and tongue tangled. “So, you think we have something to do with it?” he asked

Natasha snorted, shaking her head, curls tumbling about with the movement. “Oh, definitely not,” she said dryly. “We know what _ you’ve _been up to, Scott. And we happen to know that a couple of months ago, right around when these attacks started, you made an anonymous call to a tip hotline.”

“Wait, what?” Scott exclaimed. “That was _ anonymous!” _

“While on the line, you disclosed that you were currently under house arrest. In addition, you admitted to having undisclosed footage of a creature that had been alluding even law enforcement.” Natasha held up three fingers, ticking off as she went. “You’re the only significant Super in the area to fit any such criteria, not to mention the fact that you made the call from your _ personal _cell phone—”

“Okay,” Scott cut her off. “I get it. Calling in wasn’t exactly my… most thought-out decision.” Especially given that he didn’t even have the footage and couldn’t do shit.

“Obviously,” she smirked. “But, disregarding _ how _ we know: _ we know _ you have access to that footage, now that you’re back in contact with Hope Van Dyne—yep, we know that too. ‘We’ being SHIELD, and SHIELD is very, very interested in what that footage may show us.”

Scott hesitated. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to help SHIELD; he liked the Avengers, who didn’t that wasn’t a criminal mastermind or a politician, but he’d only just gotten back into Hope’s good graces. He didn’t want to drag a massive, corrupt organization up on her doorstep.

Natasha noticed his wavering. She shifted up on the couch, raising into good posture and dropping any good humored teasing. More formal, she somehow also seemed more dangerous.

“You’re worried about it being SHIELD,” she noted. Scott jolted a bit, surprised, but the woman nodded. “I get it, I was the one who tattled on ‘em to Congress, afterall.” She leaned closer to Scott, in a way that made Scott meet her eyes.

“It’s not just me with SHIELD on the case,” she said quietly. “You helped out Steve before. He’s in on this, too: his boyfriend—yeah, not really a secret on the team—is personally invested in this. We think it might be connected to a previous case with the now defunct Life Foundation, and that case involved mind control.”

The Winter Soldier had been subject to decades of mind control. Of course he would want to be involved in a case dedicated to stopping it, he figured, and obviously Cap wouldn’t leave him to do it alone.

“It’s not just us, either,” she continued. Her tone shifted, a bit more reserved. “Dr. Banner wanted in, too, as soon as he got back to the country.”

“Dr. Banner, as in_ the Hulk _Dr. Banner? Didn’t he, uh, disappear?”

“He did,” she said sharply. Scott stopped himself short; clearly she wasn’t reserved on the topic because of a lack of emotional investment. A sore topic for Black Widow was not one he wanted to linger on.

“Why’s he interested?” he asked, trying to steer the subject away from the Hulk’s apparent reappearance.

Thankfully, Natasha seemed just as eager as he was to get back to business. “The Life Foundation was meddling with some dangerous things,” she said. “We’re talking human experimentation on unwilling subjects, genetic research into immortality, the usual supervillain stuff.”

“Right,” Scott nodded, as though he too dealt with that sort of shit on a day-to-day basis like the Avengers. Sure, he’d stopped a corrupt CEO or two, but genetic experimentation? A little beyond what he usually worked with.

“That’s the kind of thing that SHIELD wants to keep under close watch,” Natasha said. She crossed her legs, one high-heeled foot tapping in thought. She gave Scott a dry look, one hand pressing into her temple. “The Avengers don’t always get all the details, about why exactly SHIELD wants what kind of info,” she told him.

“Right,” Scott repeated, wearier than before. “The whole, uh, corruption thing.”

Natasha wiggled her hand in a little-bit-of-both gesture midair. “Not all corruption, more ‘the Avengers are kept on a need-to-know basis,’” she explained. “Which is partly why I can promise you this: you and your team won’t be involved any further than you want to be.”

Scott considered it. He had tried to call in and offer up the footage to police in the first place, so he didn’t really have any qualms about handing the evidence over to the Avengers. He didn’t even really mind giving it to SHIELD, as wary as he was of the organization.

Really, he was eager to get the recording into the hands of someone who would be able to actually act on it. He and Hope had been preoccupied with her mom and settling back into what it meant to be Team Ant; Scott hadn’t even thought about the footage in months.

He knew himself, though: if he handed the footage off to the Avengers, and he knew they were out there tracking down some kind of monster, he’d be unable to just sit back. He’d want in, and if he was in, then Hope would get dragged in right along with him.

Natasha let him think in silence for a few minutes, foot tapping out the seconds while Scott sweated over whether to get involved. After a solid five minutes of this quiet, patient tapping, she heaved a sigh and pushed herself up off the sofa.

“Let me make this clear,” she said. One of her hands braced against her hip, the other holding up a phone that looked a lot sleeker than anything Scott had seen in stores. She gave it a short wiggle. “The people that sent me to recruit you? They’re going to get the footage, one way or another. They _ want _ you in on this, especially given your demo with Cap, but they don’t _ need _ you in when they’ve got the Hulk on speed dial. Got it?”

Despite the threat inherent in the words, Scott could tell she wasn’t trying to threaten him. She dangled her phone on fingertips like something dirty, and her earlier explanation (along with her past testimony) made her feelings pretty clear. She was SHIELD because she was an Avenger, but the Avengers weren’t always in with SHIELD.

Getting involved with SHIELD didn’t always work out like you planned. Even Cap, with a squeaky clean record, was labeled a traitor for trying to defend a brainwashed man’s innocence. At the same time, now that the Winter Soldier was cleared and the weird war between the Avengers was over, Cap was _ still _ involved with SHIELD. Despite everything they’d done to him and his partner, he still believed in their mission.

“I should mention,” Natasha said casually, “that in exchange for your assistance in capturing this thing, SHIELD is offering to clear your criminal record.”

“Holy shit,” Scott said.

* * *

Hope didn’t seem to know how to react to Scott and Black Widow knocking on her door.

“You’re,” she bit out, face slack, “the _ unexpected company _ Scott mentioned, huh?”

Natasha glanced up from where she was tapping out a rapid message on her phone, brow raised in challenge. “Yep. Natasha Romanov, with—”

“SHIELD, obviously,” Hope sighed. She shot Scott a weary look. “Please tell me you’re not in trouble again,” she muttered, opening her door for the two of them.

Taking this as an invitation, Nasha strolled into the manor, looking past the wealthy decor and visible tech like it was no more impressive than a microwave. Given that she’d hung out with Stark and his military tech, it probably wasn’t. “Don’t worry,” she drawled, turning and facing Hope directly. “He’s not in trouble this time. SHIELD sought him out for help with a case.”

Scott nodded repeatedly, arms crossing in satisfaction. “See,” he said, “you assume the worst, but look, SHIELD wants my _ help _! You don’t have to assume every time that—”

“—Oh, I have to,” Hope cut him off. She kicked her front door shut behind her with a heavy slam, the locking mechanisms whirring into life in metallic clicks and slides behind her. “Given you, you know, just got off from house arrest from joining a surprise rebel group. I really, really have to assume the worst, Scott.”

Scott flinched. Okay, so team and connection restored, personal trust maybe less so. It was a work in progress.

“Ouch,” Natasha said blandly. She eyed the two of them. “Are you two good, or am I gonna need to deal with you separately?”

Hope shook her head, black bob following the quick motion. “We’re fine,” she sighed. She rubbed a hand down her face, massaging at her temples. With a quick glance at Scott, she mumbled, “Sorry, you know.”

“Yeah,” Scott said. He got it, he really did. It was way too soon that they’d gone back to how they were before after one or two missions.

They both startled at a loud clap. Natasha wore a flat smile, hands braced in front of her like a proud teacher. “Great, because my team has already been through their whole, ‘oh, we have to regain our trust in one another, however shall we do it’ thing. Really not wanting to babysit another group of superheroes.”

Hope looked sour at the first half of this description, but Scott couldn’t help hanging onto that last word. “Are we considered superheroes?” he asked, incredulous. “Like, by SHIELD?”

Natasha smirked. “Not quite. You’re unregistered, so officially you’re vigilantes. Law breakers, the lot of you.”

“We don’t technically _ have _powers,” Hope argued. 

“And neither do I,” Natasha said. “Exciting talk. Let’s have it later. I’m here for the tapes showing the monster you two filmed about a year ago.”

Hope blinked a few times, clearly caught off guard. Her brows furrowed just a bit, eyes squinting in thought, before widening suddenly. “Oh my god,” she breathed, “SHIELD’s going after that thing?”

“It’s technically classified, but yes, we are,” Natasha said. “There’s more I could tell you, but first I want to get that footage. The only way I’m telling you more about it is if you agree on joining SHIELD in taking it in.”

Hope blinked. Eyes darting to Scott, her brow furrowed in question, she asked, “Joining SHIELD?”

“I know,” Scott said, expression pleading for her to understand. “I know, but I want to be in on this. SHIELD may be questionable, but I trust the Avengers.” Sadly enough, Scott found himself sweating anxiously. “And she said they could clear my record. You don’t have to do anything but I… I’m already committed.”

He’d moved closer to Hope, not quite brave enough to reach out. He knew things were still painfully fragile between them, and he wasn’t trying to make the decision _ for her, _ but he wanted her to understand why he was taking on a mission that she may want no part of.

Arms carefully folded in front of her, head dipped slightly, Hope tracked Scott’s hesitant movements. She was, naturally, a bit defensive about Scott making decisions for himself that could affect the whole team. At his last statement, she raised her eyebrows in question.

“Clear it?” she asked. Slightly disbelieving, but not at SHIELD’s resources. More their likelihood to actually follow through. She shot a harsh look at Natasha. “Would they really do that? You’re not bullshitting us?”

Natasha smiled wryly. “If they could clear my record, they wouldn’t think twice to clear his,” she assured them.

Hope stared at Natasha for a moment, like she was trying to see through to the truth. Probably she wouldn’t be able to break any mask Black Widow chose to wear, but that wouldn’t stop her trying.

Natasha was unbothered, placid in the face of Scott’s nervousness and Hope’s doubt. “I can’t promise you a lot from SHIELD, except upholding that bargain,” she admitted, “but the Avengers are in this to keep more people from getting hurt. We think you can help us with that. You’d be in as much as you want, that’s all.”

With a sigh, Hope glanced at Scott. “If you’re in, I’m in,” she said. Her gaze was firm. “I don’t want to split the team again. If you think this is a good mission, we’re _ both _in.”

A smile broke out on Scott’s face, and he reached for Hope’s hand. “Thank you,” he said genuinely. Hope smiled back tentatively, and Scott felt the dread in his stomach vanish entirely. He wasn’t going to break her trust again, thank god, and with the two of them helping the Avengers the group of them would—

“Great, glad we’re all on the same page,” Natasha said, startling the two of them out of their intimate moment. Hope’s hand sprung out of Scott’s like it burnt. The snort Natasha didn’t bother disguising let them know this didn’t go unnoticed, and Scott felt his own ears burning.

“Right,” Hope mumbled. She braced her hands into fists at her side, standing up straighter and not meeting either of their eyes. “Let’s go get that footage. Follow me.”

Their group set off at a brisk pace, Natahsa following cooly at Hope’s heels and Scott hurrying after both of them. He expected to head toward their usual monitoring room, but Hope took a left where he predicted a right, leading them into a part of the mansion that he had yet to really explore.

This must have been the room where Hope shut away Scott’s things when he ran off with the rogue Avengers. It was stuffy-looking, occupied with dusty armchairs, desks shoved against each other unceremoniously, a few random outfits that Scott had worn a couple of times and apparently forgot, and collapsing boxes of external harddrives. All of it looked like it hadn’t been touched in months.

Hope frowned at the stacks closest to the door. “It could be any of these…” she murmured, distaste set in her face. She kicked at a box near her foot and something inside of it rattled and fell over.

Moving past Hope, Natasha steered through the maze of clutter like she was the one who put it there. She kneeled down and shoved her arm into a stack of harddrives. Oddly determined, she rooted around at what Scott assumed was the bottom of the box, tugging up a random harddrive and shaking off the coating of dust.

“What the hell,” Scott said, stuck where he’d entered by the doorframe. At his side, Hope look similarly weirded out.

“You can’t have just known which drive was which,” she said in disbelief. Her arms were crossed, her body angled slightly away from the room. It was obvious she hadn’t had any intention of looking through the room any time soon, let alone drag along the man whose departure had led to her filling the room with memories or a spy from SHIELD.

Natasha glowered at the two of them. “I don’t,” she said. “This could be anything. But we’ve got to start _ somewhere, _ if you didn’t organize or label anything.” She shot a disparaging look at Hope.

With an angry flush, Hope huffed, form tensing further. “I didn’t exactly take my time setting it up,” she muttered. She shook her head, brushing off the discomfort. “But I took my time before everything went down, so we know what _ not _ to look at.”

Hope rifled through a seemingly random box, feeling her way to a harddrive that she showed to the other two. Unlike the one Natasha had dug up, this one was labeled with a specific set of dates.

“Before you left, I made sure to keep everything organized, in case we needed to reference back any kind of footage from scouter ants or evidence,” she explained. “So the footage with the monster will be labeled. But every harddrive holds about a month’s worth of footage, so this may take…”

“Not as long as you think,” Natasha said. “We know the month, so we just need to find the tape. SHIELD is good at scrubbing through footage fast.”

“I told you we were in,” Hope said, frowning. “I don’t just want to send off the data and get a thank you a few weeks from now.”

Natasha smirked. “Let me clarify,” she said, “we’re very, very good at scrubbing through footage.”

Which is how, after about half an hour of digging through boxes for the labeled drive in question, Scott found himself serving drinks to Black Widow and his kind-of-girlfriend while they waited for, apparently, the _ Hulk _ or _ Iron Man _ or one of their systems or something to get back to them with a timestamp.

“This is good,” Natasha said, audibly surprised. She sipped at the scotch Hope had instructed Scott to bring out from Hank’s stash.

“My dad has expensive tastes.”

Scott grimaced at his own glass. Maybe his lower-middle class upbringing was showing, but he was much more of a beer guy.

It was also obvious that he was a bit out of his conversational depth: while Scott sipped at his drink, gaze flicking between the two women, Hope and Natasha had gotten into an energetic conversation on cameras. Apparently spying was expensive business, because the prices the two were dropping had Scott rethinking the logistics of their camera ants.

“Most of the ants are using Nikons,” said Hope, which was news to Scott. He’d assumed everything Team Ant used was a Pym original, like his suit, but hey—just because you’re going to make a space-time defying suit didn’t mean you wanted to reinvent the wheel, or the camera. 

Even if the camera in question apparently cost over_ three thousand _ dollars, christ. Scott was definitely going to be more delicate when rounding up their street ants.

Natasha mentioned that she preferred Leica. She thought they were easy to make discreet. Hope apparently found this very intriguing. Scott himself found the combinations of letters and numbers and technical details that went into a damn lens overwhelming.

Before Scott could excuse himself to Google camera prices, Natasha’s phone broke the conversation with a loud chirp. Apparently not expecting a call, Natasha jumped just a bit in her chair, drink sloshing dangerously in her glass.

With a universal, awkward ‘let me sit up a bit to get something out of my pocket’ maneuver, Natasha clamored for her phone. The name on the screen must not have been whom she expected, either. She stared at her screen with a slight furrow between her brows.

“Is it SHIELD?” Hope asked, sitting up straight. Her hands were tight around the stem of her glass. Scott glanced between the two women, nervous and eager butterflies filling his stomach.

Natasha glanced up at Hope, her face not giving much away. “Kind of,” she said. She put her phone down screen-up on the table between the three of them, pressing a button to put it on speaker.

“Hey. I have you on speaker — I’m still with Scott and Hope.”

“Oh, the ant people, right?” a male voice asked from the phone. He sounded tired and slightly amused, but also like that was his usual state: tired, and used to it. “Hi, ant people. I think I found what we’re looking for, unless there’s another black slime flying around the city.”

“Who’s this?” Hope whispered to Natasha, who was wearing a tight smile.

“Say hi, Bruce. It’s rude to not introduce yourself.”

“Right, right. Bruce Banner, doctorate in various things, occasional hulk. Nice to talk with you guys and get your ant videos. I found the clip with our mud monster.”

Hope blinked. She seemed to take a moment to mentally work past that she was talking to the Hulk. A quiet, Hope-version of starstruck, Scott thought. His own starstruck was a bit more typical: he felt jittery, like a kid in line to talk to Santa at the mall. He was talking with the _ Hulk _, get the camera, mom.

“Mud monster,” she said. She visibly shoved down her own eagerness, keeping herself professional. Her face was forced-calm, in a way she usually used to suppress anger but apparently could be used to cover excessive zeal. “You think it’s made of mud?”

“Oh, probably not,” Bruce said. “I’m just messing with you guys, sorry. It doesn’t look like anything from Earth, except maybe some kind of hairless mutation-affected primate…”

He trailed off, met with silence. A sigh crackled over the speakers. “That was, that was a joke. It’s an alien, c’mon guys, obviously.”

Scott blinked. The Hulk’s social skills could use some work, but the fact that he’d come to a conclusion like that so quickly was surprising.

“An alien?” Hope asked, apparently as uncertain as Scott. “Why not another super powered person? I mean, you become a giant green person made of muscle.”

Across from Hope, Natasha went tense. She shot a look at Hope, catching her eyes, and shook her head sharply. Hope winced. Sore topic, Scott guessed, given the unpleasant media attention the Hulk tended to attract and the wrecked look Banner seemed to have whenever he emerged from one of the Hulk’s confrontations.

For a few moments, everyone in the room held their breath as silence screamed across the speaker. Then, with a bitter sigh, Banner broke the tension.

“Fair, that’s fair,” he said. He sounded resigned. “But me and the big guy are one guy in one piece, and in case you guys didn’t notice, this thing is climbing buildings by extending parts of its own body.”

Scott made a sound of distress, better left unclassified than a moan of despair. Unfortunately, Banner picked up on it; he laughed.

“Oh, I know,” he huffed, “the idea of throwing off parts of yourself but maintaining the same muscle mass, god, what happened to the conservation of matter? Ever since Thor showed up, things around here make less and less sense each year. First, the Norse gods come down, then a hole opens up in the sky and _ more _ aliens come flying through—”

“Point made, Bruce,” Natasha drawled, cutting off what sounded like a well-practiced rant. 

“Right.” There was a shuffling sound over the line. “So, that’s my very scientific conclusion. Alien, probably. Tied, somehow, to the dissolved Life Foundation and their human experimentation. And everyone below the poverty line in San Francisco thinks it’s some kind of avenging angel.”

“Huh?” Scott frowned in confusion. Across from him, Hope nodded like this was old news. She shot a glower at Scott.

“Don’t tell me you’ve been sitting under house arrest for months and haven’t bothered to keep up with the local news,” she said.

Scott bristled. “I watch the news,” he said, partially true. “You know, when it’s on! I called in the tip about the monster, c’mon.”

That seemed to amuse Natasha, for some reason. “Well, if you’ve gone anywhere near social media the past month or so, you’d know what we’re getting at.”

And hey, Scott was a tech-savvy engineer. He got technology, he got social media, but that didn’t mean he _ got _ it. Did he have a Twitter? Technically, yes: he’d opened the app once at his daughter’s insistence, but he was in his mid thirties. That alone should have given him an excuse, in his book, but Natahsa and Hope were wearing matching expressions of slight exasperation.

Natasha plucked her phone off the table. After a quick moment tapping around the screen, she held it out to Scott. Remembering the price tags the two women had been dropping earlier, he reached for the thing with two hands.

It took just a couple minutes of scrolling through the Twitter tag SanFranCryptid for Scott to feel sick. “What,” he said, not quite a question, “how can people be saying this stuff about a murderer?”

Hope moved behind him, a comforting presence at his back. Eyes on the screen, she read aloud, “‘Hey lethal protector, love u, here’s a mugshot for the scumbag I know for a fact has been harassing girls in mission district. pls take out this dickhead lol.’”

“It has 316 retweets,” Scott said, feeling nauseous. “How can 316 people blindly call for a monster to kill a random guy?”

Natsha gingerly took her phone back from Scott’s stiff hands. Her face had lost any trace of amusement. “Mob mentality,” she said grimly. “This thing’s proven a hell of a lot faster than law enforcement at taking out threats on the streets. For the people in rougher areas, it’s officially a vigilante.” 

Scott bristled. “You said _ we _ were vigilantes,” he argued, “and maybe we are, but we don’t go around _ killing _ people.”

Before Natasha could reply, Banner’s voice came back over the speakers—he’d been quiet for so long, Scott had almost forgot he was there. “There’s more than one way to be a vigilante,” he stated. “Some take it farther than others. This thing is making itself judge, jury, and executioner. Which, hey, alien on Earth thinks itself above human laws, how surprised can you be.”

“Thor’s an alien, and he’s not murdering people on the street,” Natasha said.

“Point taken,” Banner agreed. “Being an alien doesn’t account for serial killing. But it does make this thing a lot trickier to keep track of and to hunt down.”

“Which is where you two come in,” Natasha added, nodding at Scott and Hope.

Hope met Scott’s eyes. Hers were worried, though she was trying to hide it behind her usual cool countenance. Scott felt guilt simmering in his stomach: he desperately hoped this wasn’t going to be a case of dragging Hope down with him. As much as he hated to pull Hope along with him into danger, as much as he hated to risk the trust that Team Ant was rebuilding, he couldn’t help but want her beside him when he undertook a crazy mission like this one.

“How exactly do you think we’ll be able to help?” Hope asked. Scott was glad she addressed the elephant in the room: between two of the actual, real life Avengers, he didn’t see how Team Ant was going to improve any sort of alien serial killer takedown operation.

Maybe Natasha was expecting the question. For the first time since Scott had found her loitering in his living room, she smiled seemingly genuinely.

“Even SHIELD isn’t omnipotent,” she said. “We mainly operate out of New York, so we’re not as familiar with San Francisco, especially not the parts of the city this thing has been spotted in.”

“You guys have some intricate systems for surveillance,” Banner chimed in. “The network you’ve set up using _ ants _ is wild. Haven’t seen anything like it outside of, oh, Tony’s labs. You’re the only ones to have caught the monster on anything less blurry than Nokia-quality screenshots.”

Natasha huffed at that comment. “Long story short, we don’t expect you to fight anything. Mostly we want to use your bugs.”

“We’ll use the ants _ with _ you,” Scott stated. “And they’re insects, not bugs.” God help him if he was sticking up for the dignity of their ant army in front of Black Widow and the Hulk.

“Of course. It’s a partnership.” Natasha stuck out her hand, raising a brow. “You agreed earlier, but I want to make sure you get what’s going to happen. We’re going to use your team’s resources to help capture this thing, we’re going to take it in and question it, and then, most likely, we’re putting it down.”

Hope stepped in front of Scott. She took Natsha’s hand, meeting her eyes. “You said SHIELD would clear Scott’s record,” she said. “I’m holding you to it.”

With a firm shake of Hope’s hand, Natasha nodded. “I like you guys. I want SHIELD to help you as much as the Avengers want to take down this monster.” She smirked.

“And we really want to take it down.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi again ! it is I, late again but this time due to animal crossing almost entirely lmao.

** _That one._ **

Eddie’s finger hovered over the hyperlink, stopped in its tracks at his partner’s voice. The phone screen lit up his face with blue light in the dimness of their bedroom, the sun and any prying eyes kept from the window by heavy, makeshift curtains.

“This one?” he asked, pointing to the name they’d focused in on. Feeling their eager response in the back of his mind, he clicked the profile and scanned the description on the page. He muttered parts of it quietly, letting the damning words resonate in the air.

“‘Wanted by the SFPD on charges of kidnapping, rape, flight to aviod prosecution,’” he read. “‘White male, 6’2”, stocky appearance. Short, light hair, tattoo of a snake biting into a rat on his lower neck.’”

His other rumbled in the back of his mind_._**_ Lines up_** , they said. ** _Just like the girl said, the one from Twitter._ **

“They’re all from Twitter,” Eddie replied automatically, “but yeah, he’s right on the money. Same shit tattoo. And he’s stayed in the San Francisco area for years, despite the active warrants.”

V rolled about, a bundle of violent excitement. Their impulsivity was a dangerous match to his own.

** _Let’s get him!_ **

“What, now?”

** _Why not?_ ** A dark coil of his other drifted forward, swiping on his phone screen to bring him back to the Tweet that had caught their attention in the first place.

**Just jess** @hikingformej • 2d

I know it’ll prob never see this but, could yall rt this? This POS rapist has been wandering outer mission, cops haven’t been able to get him or maybe don’t want to cause we’re broke, idk. (1/?)  #SanFranCryptid 

[**PHOTOSET IMAGE 1**: a somewhat blurry photo of a tall white man in a gray tank top, a tattoo of a snake eating a rat visible above his collarbone. He’s gesturing in conversation to a small group of other men, smoking on a badly cracked sidewalk; IMAGE 2: the same man, this time grinning smugly at the camera from the front seat of a leather-lined car. In the backseat of the car, two tearstained women sit hunched, bruises visible on their upper arms.]

9 Replies 2.1k Retweets 4.4k Likes

**Just jess** @hikingformej • 2d

This human garbage can is the man that assaulted me last year. There’s a warrant for him but the guys he runs with don’t care, they’ve been hiding him at their fuckin clubhouses or something. (2/?)  #SanFranCryptid 

**Just jess** @hikingformej • 2d

It’ll never see this since there’s so many but maybe it will if yall rt? I’m safe now but this guy is so dangerous, he’s horrible and he has to go. If the cops can’t/won’t do it i know the cryptid would (3/3)  #SanFranCryptid 

** _Very bad guy. Easy to find with his bad tattoo, and we know where he is_ **. Their hatred of such a terrible person amplified Eddie’s own hate, making Eddie fight the impulse to spring to his feet and hunt the guy right there, right then.

Eddie rubbed his forehead in frustration, then rested his hand on the tauter skin of his stomach. His other, by nature, swirled into a chemical cocktail of his own feelings and made them bigger, stronger, hungrier.

Together, their sense of right and wrong became an aggressive wave of righteousness. With the power that swept through them as Venom, and the absurd hunger and hormones from his pregnancy, it took all of Eddie’s self control to keep them in their bed. He glanced at the time displayed on the screen.

“It’s only 8 pm,” he argued. His stomach rumbled in disagreement, a second-hand hunger from their child that was getting harder to distinguish from his own.

V felt it too, if less than Eddie felt it. They formed pitch hands that they rested on his stomach carefully, one twining in with his own fingers. “Already dark out,” they said. Their voice, deep and grottal, sounded through the still air of their dim apartment. The dark atmosphere and the dark voice were almost hypnotizing. “And the little one wants it, don’t they? I feel you feeling it.”

Eddie pursed his lips. They did want it—_ he _ wanted it, by proxy, which made V want it—but they’d hunted two days ago. Forty-eight hours, and the hybrid growing in his stomach had him salivating at the thought of red, raw meat.

“It’s kind of soon,” he tried. His other could feel the shakiness of this defense, how his paranoia was fighting the impulsiveness that fueled their best and worst decisions. “It’s only been a couple of days since we hunted. And, you know, we saw the news the other day: one of those stealth planes the Avengers use was spotted in San Francisco. I don’t want to have to worry about, I don’t know, Tony fuckin’ Stark shooting us when we’re trying to eat.”

His other hissed at the mental image Eddie’s mind couldn’t help but conjure. “That Iron Man,” they growled, “he fed wars, hoards wealth. Trash. We don’t need to worry about him—if he came after us, we’d eat him too.”

“I don’t think we have a lot of room to talk, darling,” Eddie said, despite his amusement. “We eat people.”

V coiled, defensive and slightly guilty. “Can’t help what we are,” they said quietly. “And what our spawn is.”

Their essence pulsed with an old desperation, the need to be understood. It was the same desperation to be known that Eddie had felt haunting him his whole life, a frustration that followed him through church after church. In the end, he couldn't even regret his rage: it was what drew him and his other together.

Eddie tightened the grip his fingers held on V’s dark tendrils. “I know, and you know I don’t regret a damn bit of it,” he said. “And you’re right. We can’t help that we gotta eat. Stark, the Avengers, they’re just an extension of the whole fucked up system that lets people get away with shit, right?”

It wasn’t a question, not really, but V thrummed with agreement. “We’re good,” they spouted. “We’re doing good, good for our family, good for the city, when we eat those bad men.”

“Hell yes, we are,” Eddie sighed with a smile. “Not our fault the city lets scumbags run wild. And not our damn problem if the fuckin’ Avengers are trying to stand up for trash that doesn’t deserve it.”

“Deserve it,” his other repeated, a dark, eager echo of Eddie’s own thoughts. “They deserve it, the swine we eat. We take them, digest them, and we grow beautiful life.”

“We’re the best thing to come of their shit lives,” Eddie agreed. “Well, not just us. Them.”

Over his stomach, which had only grown an inch or so since their child’s conception roughly two months prior, his other made a mad dash of dark lines. Their excitement over the growth of their baby was infectious; when Eddie was on the edge of sleep, he’d feel them racing over the surface of his skin, coils spreading like roots as V eagerly mapped out the changes to his body.

“Them,” they recited. “Them, them. A new chance. The greatest good.”

As if recognizing their epitaph, the hybrid in Eddie’s body sent out another pang of hunger, Eddie’s own stomach growling seconds after.

He groaned, hunching over into the covers, his hand pressing close to his bump. “Yeah,” he grumbled. “I know. Okay. You’re right, darling.”

A dark laugh echoed in his own head, making Eddie crack a slight smile through the discomfort.

“I am right very often,” his other crowed. “Know what we need. Know what _ you _ need, Eddie.”

Eddie didn’t miss the suggestive undertones in V’s voice. Still, the discomfort in his gut overpowered the pulse of heat he felt at the words. This pregnancy oscillated between keeping him uncomfortable and making him incessantly horny.

“You do,” he murmured. He let his hand drift down slightly, brushing over the front of his boxers, just a bit. The roiling in his stomach kept him from pressing down.

His other sensed the movement, coating his hand in black. Amusement filled the back of Eddie’s mind; V kept his hand from moving further.

“Don’t want to be distracted, do we, darling Eddie?” they purred.

Eddie groaned, flopping back on the comforter below him. “Not like I could get too wound up like this, anyway,” he grumbled. As if to emphasize this point, his stomach made a frustrated gurgle, the thought of fresh meat guiding his taste buds.

Trying to add a voice of reason—despite his own dangerous impulses, and honestly hoping, on some level, that his other would tear the arguments down—Eddie said, “It’s still only 8:30.”

A rope of black ink spilled from his shoulder, stretching to the shrouded window. V nudged aside the thick curtain, revealing the dark alley behind their apartment already dimly lit with streetlight. Rumbling with delight, his other retreated back into Eddie’s form.

“Cloudy night,” they said, poorly containing their excitement. “Already nice and dark. We can be careful. We can hunt quickly, stay quiet, then when we are full we can have fun.”

His other’s clawed hand, which had been hovering tauntingly above his waistband, reached down, pressing two sharp tips to the slight bulge of Eddie’s clit. Arousal mixed with hunger. Eddie swallowed a grunt of frustration. It felt like all the nerve endings in his body were focused in on that barely-there, teasing pressure. He glanced out the window, sense flying out in turn.

“It is pretty dark,” he murmured. “Yeah, it’s dark, we’re hungry. And we’ve gotta eat, right?”

It was obvious he didn’t need any more convincing; Eddie shoved himself up off the bed, heart already starting to pump in anticipation. His left hand was swiftly coated in the same dark muscle as his right, and he clenched both, trying their reflexes.

V crawled up his arms, covering Eddie in thick strands of their mass. Eddie exhaled as they ran up and masked over his features. He sank into his other, and they pooled out over him.

Together, Venom crouched next to their bed. They shook, briefly, overwhelmed bodily by their own anticipation—sometimes they felt so much they worried they would lose themselves in the bond between the two of them. Lowered below their chest, they shook their head roughly, eyes squinted shut in pleasure.

_ Focus, love _, Eddie thought, slightly teasing.

“It is us, not me,” they stated defensively. Like a dog shaking water from its coat, they rattled their own form from head to toe, a full-body stretch that sent their tongue lolling. They licked their chops, feeling the prickle of sharp teeth.

They moved to the window, pushing open the glass to the night air. The smells of the city, pollution and trash, were always heightened when they were in this state. It stank, but so too was it electrifying. Thousands of people formed a prevalent scent of _ life _, like rich soil disturbed by animals skittering about a forest floor.

With a deep inhale, they slid out their window, shutting it behind them soundlessly. They made only the slightest metallic clang as their limbs made contact with the fire escape. Not wanting to linger too long at eye level with any neighbors’ windows, they climbed swiftly to the roof of their apartment building, crawling the sides with anchoring claws.

“Where will we find our prey?” they asked themself. Eddie’s own memories of the city’s layout was proffered helpfully to both of their thoughts. “Yes, Outer Mission. Due south of our apartment, and rife with crime.”

_ It’s a big area, _ thought Eddie. _ Lots of ground to cover. Really no guarantee we’re gonna find this guy tonight, or tomorrow night. _

Venom lurched with purpose, crossing between buildings in the direction of their target. “You underestimate us,” Venom said pridefully. “We are popular with the people there, you and I.” Hind legs gripped and propelled from ledge to ledge, concrete roofs crackling slightly under their weight. “Will want to help us find him.”

Eddie tried his best to ignore the sight of city lights blurring beneath the two of them from a distance. Traversing the city together with his other had forced him to get used to heights, but that didn’t mean he enjoyed the stomach-lifting sensation of air rushing past their massive form as they soared, suspended, between landings. _ If we go around asking people for directions, we may end up blowing our cover. _

“Won’t,” Venom said simply. Eddie radiated doubt from within them, and they growled. “Can be convincing. Let them know to stay quiet, so we can fulfil what we came to do.”

Venom could be convincing, if by convincing one meant that their audience would be so freaked out by their giant teeth and bloody reputation that, more often than not, people folded quickly and blurted what they knew as quickly as they could to appease the monster in front of them.

_ We can try it your way _ , Eddie thought. _ If it doesn’t work and people run screaming before they can point us towards some intel, we can try and plan a stakeout _.

“No time. Hungry _ now.” _

_ Patience, love. _

“You’re one to talk.”

Eddie huffed, unheard inside his other. The outwardly stubborn reaction didn’t fool his partner for a moment. Excitement and fondness were a constant, back-and-forth stream between the two of them, when they formed Venom together. Even swapping banter, Eddie radiated happy satisfaction.

Venom grinned wider. They eyed a particularly large gap between tall steel buildings directly ahead, mischief prickling at the edges of their bond. Despite their combined delight, Eddie grimaced.

“I’m going to do the trick again,” Venom said. They braced their arms against the edge of the building’s sleek steel arches.

Eddie’s heart skipped a beat and rushed through with nerves. _ Trick? _ Eddie thought with slight dread. _ Wait, you’re not talking about— _

Venom threw both arms out, strands of black adhering impossibly strong to twin points of contact on the large obstacle in front of them. Using that momentum, they pushed themself aggressively from their perch.

Then they swung, like fuckin’ acrobats, like that_ god damn Spiderman brat _ from New York, fuck V for ever finding that article about how Spiderman likely utilized basic physics to navigate the living puzzle of New York architecture.

Jumping was bad enough, Eddie had argued the first couple of times his other had experimented with the newfound method of transportation.

V, unfortunately, found propelling themself with tangles of web-like ooze was absolutely delightful. They loved Earth’s unique sense of gravity, they said.

Fuck that shit, Eddie said. Still, he had to concede that—worst comes to worst—it was wildly fast to travel across the city like a slingshot, and if they ever really needed to absolutely book it from the scene of the crime…

Venom let loose one set of dark tendrils and, before shooting another latching set onto the next buildings in their path, flipped themself in a smooth cartwheel midair. They swished into the motion with unnecessary flourish.

Spiderman was a fucking idiot, and he gave his other terrible, stupid ideas, Eddie thought.

* * *

It was cold. Isidora was wearing a denim skirt, cut just above the knee, and a thick, fluffy, gray coat that she routinely ducked the lower half of her face into for warmth. Her breath caught in the fur of the coat, catching the streetlight in tiny drops of moisture.

Isidora had been waiting at the bus stop for twenty minutes. BART was usually late, so she always planned to arrive just after on time, but this was pushing it. Twenty-five minutes past schedule was shittier than usual, even for the less punctual Outer Mission stops.

Her pumps clacked against the pavement as she tapped her foot in impatience. _ Click, click, _ echoing against the mostly-empty road, until Isidora suddenly noticed a faint _ stomp, _ quiet, heavy and male, stepping closer to her position at the bus stop.

She stopped tapping her foot. In her pockets, her hands clenched around her pepper spray. If she stood as casually and confidently as possible, she should be fine. Most guys wouldn’t bother her, but past experience kept her on her guard. 

A shadow crossed through the streetlight close to Isidora. A bit too close. Pointedly, she kept her gaze fixed ahead, staring at a bus that wasn’t there. _ Any minute now, _ she thought with rising anxiety.

“Hey, you ignoring me?” the guy demanded. Isidora did not look his way. The guy didn’t like that response, and with an angry grunt, he reached out and wrapped a hand around Isidora’s arm.

Jolting, Isidora attempted to tug her arm out of his grasp, but the douchebag held firm. Indignity rose in her. “The fuck do you think you’re doing?” she snapped.

Now that she had a clear look at the guy, she saw he was an older white man, a bit of a gut and obviously not completely sober. Clean shaven, but frazzled. The look on his face—superiority and frustration—was the ugliest thing about him.

“Whassit look like I’m doing?” The man gestured with his free hand, an up-and-down motion that blatantly meant to represent Isidora as a whole. “With what you’re wearin’, I’m looking for a nice time, obviously.”

Bile rose in Isidora’s throat. Just because she was a sex worker didn’t mean she was a goddamn buffet.

“No,” she said bluntly. She tugged again, unable to break his hold on her arm. In the pocket on the same side the man was grasping, her hand unclipped her pepper spray. “I’m giving you one last chance to let go of my arm—”

“Or fuckin’ what?” the guy said nastily. He glanced down, slow, and he must have caught the fist Isidora’s hand formed in the shape of her jacket pocket. Maybe this guy wasn’t as dumb or high as she pegged him to be. “Oh, nuh-uh,” he grunted.

Before Isidora could pull out her pepper spray, the man twisted her arm, _ hard _, behind her back. She yelped in pain, her hand forced from her pocket at an awkward angle. With the hold she was in, her pepper spray pointed at nothing.

“That’s what I thought,” the man bragged. “I used to be a cop. I know when bitches are trying to get one up on me.”

“I’m not trying to get anything on you!” Isidora yelled. Her voice, high and strained, echoed against the brick and concrete buildings around them. She glanced around, growing panicked, but there was no one else on the street. _ Shit, _ she thought in despair, _ not like this. _

“With that shit in your pocket? You’re gonna try to use it on me,” the man growled. “I’ll pay you, calm the fuck down.”

“I don’t _ want _ your money. Get off!” she screamed, voice raised as loud as she could make it in a vain attempt to draw someone’s attention. The man’s face twisted up at the volume, and he looked quickly around them at the empty road, before grabbing Isidora’s other arm (which she had been scratching ineffectively at the guy’s denim coat) and tugging her backwards against the wall.

Isidora yelled, for anyone or anything, up until the man smushed his clammy hand up against the lower half of her face, muffling her. She tried to bite at the hand covering her mouth. With a grunt of frustration, the man shook her head aggressively by the hand covering her mouth.

Her heart raced, her body coated in cold sweat, as she felt herself slowly drift into a state of frozen fear. _ Not like this! _ she thought again. Her body, betraying her anger, went limp and shaky in confused horror. Her hands tingled.

Every sex worker knew the stories, the murder rates, the sexual assault statistics. She knew the body’s response to sudden terror didn’t always make sense, but she’d always thought she’d at least be able to_ fight back _. Instead her body felt like a heavy puppet. The streetlights above them seemed too-bright.

“There we go,” the man said, and he had the audacity to smile. His hands loosened from their harsh hold and skated down the sides of her body. “Look, like I said, I’ll pay you later. I’ve already got a place in mind, so—”

Then the man’s head was gone. 

Isidora blinked at the bloody stump.

His body, which was suddenly a shining mess of liquid red, toppled next to Isidora against the wall, then slid in an anticlimactic, wet _ thud _ to the ground. 

Isidora screamed. Her body, still frozen in the fear from earlier, locked up even more. She couldn’t take her eyes off of the headless corpse on the ground. It leaked red across the pavement, puddling under her previously green pumps.

She was pretty sure she was still screaming, but it was hard to tell when she also was pretty sure she had left her body behind in some surreal nightmare world where creepy predators appeared out of nowhere, and then slumped dead away even more suddenly.

Maybe she’d just stay here and scream forever, she thought distantly, her body a statue of horror. And maybe pure fear included hallucinating, because she could have sworn she saw the shadows pulsing and moving from the same spot the man had met his end.

“Are you okay?” a guttural voice asked from somewhere in the shadows. Then Isidora’s eyes adjusted, and she realized it wasn’t someone _in_ the darkness: the darkness _was_ someone.

Apparently manners were the key to overpowering sheer terror. Without much conscious thought, she replied, “I’m fine.” Her voice was more breath than sound. She couldn’t take her eyes off of the confusing sight in front of her. “Who… you’re…” 

The shadows undulated, glinting under the streetlight like oil; Isidora’s eyes trailed upwards toward where the light caught something glinting, instinctively looking for eyes.

Two eyes, gleaming like pearls, stretched as long as her forearm and pupiless, peered back at her. But what really caught the light, she realized, was the sharklike mouthful of teeth below.

It towered above her; her head barely came up to its chest. Isidora had to tilt her neck as far as she could in order to keep her eyes trained on what she assumed to be its face. Despite her bizarre state of horror-induced calm, she didn’t want to take her eyes off of its teeth.

“Maybe you know us,” it said. Its voice reminding Isidora of charcoal come to life. “We are popular on Twitter.”

In spite of every survival instinct inside her fighting to keep her calm and collected, Isidora couldn’t help but choke out a laugh. Was it joking? Could a monster joke—or use Twitter?

The monster frowned. Isidora’s heart skipped a beat at the sight, and oh shit, did she just piss this thing off by implying it couldn’t use social media.

Apparently not; the beast tilted its head to the side, like it was listening to something Isidora couldn’t hear, and with a huff, it sat backwards on its hindlegs. With its body lowered to her line of sight, Isidora could now take in its full form.

And, shit, there was a lot of form to take in. The pulsing shadows Isidora had spotted earlier now made themself known as muscles, massive, like an otherworldly bodybuilder on steroids. With the muscles, and the way the thing was hunching over to be closer to her height, the thing reminded Isidora of a panther, crouching like a housecat.

“Not a joke,” it stated. “We ourselves are not on Twitter. But they talk of us. They call us a cryptid.”

With a jolt, Isidora knew exactly whom she was talking to. She’d heard of some of the other sex workers she knew mobilizing their normally ‘promotional only’ Twitter profiles to mention what they’d been tagging #SanFranCryptid.

According to them, just dropping that tag in a Tweet—mentioning that you were a fan, specifically—was enough to help stem the tide of predatory douchebags. Just a namedrop, and shitty guys tended to back off.

“Yeah, yeah I know you,” she breathed. Despite the blood cooling at her feet, she felt her heart rate start to slow. This thing wouldn’t hurt her. “You’re the, uh, San Francisco Cryptid.”

The cryptid seemed to preen. “We are,” it said. Its smile, still pretty threatening, came back.

Isidora noted the pronoun. “Is that… the _ royal _we? Uh. I don’t want to be rude, how should I. Refer to you…” she trailed off.

A slight furrow formed between the monster’s eyes—a bizarrely human reflex, and out of place on its strange face. It was quiet for a second before responding.

“Not royal,” it said after a moment. Maybe it had some sort of internal human encyclopedia stored away in the back of its mind, Isidora pondered. It continued, “We are one being, but made of two hearts.”

Unexpectedly poetic, Isidora thought, and clear as mud. She shook herself internally; being rescued(?) by a social media-famous, vigilante monster was not the time to dissect its personhood.

“Oh,” she said. With a glance down at the blood pooling under her feet—now growing cold and coagulating to the bottom of her shoes—and a hasty peek at the headless body lying on the ground beside her, she stepped hesitantly forward. 

“I’m fine,” she said again. It was more honest now; her heartbeat was almost normal, and aside from the simmering panic in the back of her mind, she would probably even get home without issue. Probably.

“Good,” it nodded. Its head moved downward, focusing on the remains slumped against the wall. It was quiet for a moment, and Isidora didn’t have the guts to interrupt it with questions.

Like it had done earlier, the monster tilted its head slightly, considering some sound Isidora was unable to hear. “Do you have headphones?” it asked.

Isidora blinked. “Uh, yeah, I do,” she stuttered. With a mostly-steady hand, she reached for the small pocket inside her jacket, pulling out the tangled wires. “Did you need them, or…”

“Or. Put them in for a moment.” A beat of silence, wherein Isidora’s hands hovered uncertainly in front of her, wire dangling from her phone. “Will be quick. We will tap your shoulder when we are done.”

Still confused, Isidora put in her earbuds. When she proceeded to stand there dumbly, headphone wires hanging limply, the monster grunted. “Listen to some music, something loud,” it said roughly. Isidora rushed to comply.

With pop music blaring in her ears, Isidora blinked at the monster in front of her, awaiting any further instruction. Even without pupils, it seemed to give the impression of rolling its eyes.

“Turn around,” it grumbled. Its voice was deep enough to carry just under the beat filling up Isidora’s head. A large hand—clawed, just as sharp-looking as its teeth—gripped Isidora delicately by the shoulder, angling her toward the empty road.

Isidora dutifully stared at the buildings across the street, pop music at full volume. Like this, the monster was completely out of sight and sound; were it not for the brown-red stains on her pumps, the whole sequence of events earlier could have been a dream.

She blinked at the colorful lights, hazy from distant buildings, for an uncertain amount of time. She watched her own breath form clouds in front of her. At some point she resumed tapping her foot, keeping her mind present and anchored to the beat of the music in order to keep herself from drifting into the latent freakout waiting for her in the back of her mind.

There was a gentle tap on her shoulder; she jumped despite herself, hurrying to switch off her music and turn around.

Whatever it had done to the body, she wasn’t sure, but it was gone completely. She skimmed the nearby alleyways, looking for a dumpster or an industrial trash can where it would have been able to stow it away, but nothing stood out. The man’s head had disappeared earlier, she remembered. How had it disappeared—?

“Done,” it said, stating the obvious. Isidora refocused on the present. Speculating wouldn’t get her anywhere: she got the feeling this wasn’t a cryptid that wanted to answer riddles.

The two stood in silence for a second, and despite the absurdity of the situation, Isidora started to feel awkward. What do you say to the violent vigilante monster that straight up vanishes the creep that had tried to assault you?

Then, somehow, the moment got stranger: the monster reached inward—into itself? Isidora didn’t see any pockets on that thing—and pulled out what was unmistakably a smartphone.

Distantly, some part of her noted it was an Android. Guess the local cryptid wasn’t an Apple fan.

Phone looking absurdly small in its massive, jetblack hands, the monster tapped and swiped at the screen as deftly as any other San Francisco resident under the age of 65. It must have found what it was looking for, because it shifted, stretching a hand toward Isidora, phone screen a bright rectangle in the dark.

On it was a screenshot: a white guy, grayish short hair, maybe late 30’s, with an inky tattoo of a snake biting into a rat crawling up his neck. He was smirking at the screen, two women Isidora _ recognized _ in the background of the photo, familiar bruises marking their arms—

Isidora jerked back, feeling more ill looking at the picture than when she had looked at the corpse on the ground. “Why… I know him. That guy is…”

“He will die,” the monster said simply. Isidora blinked at it.

“Good,” she said faintly, and she meant it. That guy was one of the worst she’d had to luck to not encounter personally, but local girls knew to try to avoid at all costs. Not that that was rare in their line of work, but to stand out among the rest of the trash, you had to leave a bitter impression.

“You know of him? Know his sins?”

He was a rapist that excused his own actions by throwing a stack of cash at the women he left shaking on hotel sheets. Sins was one way to put it. Again with the literary prentention. “Yeah, most girls that work this area know him. No one’s gonna miss him when he’s gone.”

The monster nodded, satisfied, and absorbed the phone into its hand, which was, apparently, both solid flesh and a liquid. “You know that we are a friend. We want to be good, take out the garbage that leaks through the system.” It flashed a mouthful of white fangs. “He shall die tonight, if we can find him.”

“Oh,” she breathed. Her heart picked back up a bit, the knowledge that something was actually being done against the people that hurt her friends, or other sex workers like them, taking over her thoughts. Too often, their bodies were found and summarily buried under the guise of high-risk professions.

With this thing, though. For the first time she could remember, the _ shitheads _were the ones at risk.

She thought about the Twitter tag. She thought about her friends feeling just a bit more comfortable screening new clients over the past month.

It was a good feeling, she thought, to have a true predator on your side.

“I know him,” Isidora said. She pulled out her own phone from a fluffy jacket pocket. Her hands were still shaking, just a bit, but it was now as much from excitement as it was from dying fear.

Her nails clacked lightly on the screen as she typed in what she knew. A quick Google search, and Isidora turned her phone screen toward the monster. “This is where he likes to hang out,” she said, voice just this side of breathy. “It’s, uh, it’s not really a bar. They have drinks there, and a clubhouse, I think, downstairs. But the girls I know, we all know not to let guys invite you here.”

Long white eyes studied her phone closely. The monster made a grumbling sound, a dark rattling noise from deep in its chest, and for a moment Isidora worried she’d finally managed to upset the thing, somehow.

Its mouth parted, and the sound carried out into a laugh. “Exactly what we needed,” it growled. It sat back on its haunches again, head tilted to the absence of sound once again. “Ah, yes. Not too far from here. Outer Mission, still. Same area.” 

It had to have that internal Wikipedia, she thought. Maybe Google Maps. 

Isidora blinked. “It’s still pretty far, I think…?” she said hesitantly. “If I was heading there from here on the bus, it would take, like, an hour, at least…”

“We do not need a bus.” A pause. **_“_**...Thank you for your help.”

The monster unfurled itself, and Isidora was again struck by its height. It took up so much space, even out in the middle of the unoccupied sidewalk, Isidora felt like it was growing into the shadows around it. She couldn’t imagine being in a room with the thing.

Muscles (maybe muscles, if it wasn’t just made of fluid) tensed on the things legs, and Isidora startled as she realized that it apparently tonight meant _ right now _.

“Wait!” she yelped. Impulsively, she reached a hand out to grab onto it. In retrospect, that was one of the dumber things she’d done in her entire life—trying to hold back a shadow monster almost twice her size—but she couldn’t shut out the part of her mind that was just a bit starstruck at meeting the thing that offered her and her friends hope.

Miraculously, it did. It obviously wasn’t her grib that held it back, given that it had beheaded a man faster than she could blink and hid a body in minutes, but the touch of her hand on its side caused the monster to pause.

Isidora was struck by the feeling of it—it made her think, bizarrely, of trying to hold onto pond water: cool, not-quite-wet, with a deceptively liquid give to the skin like surface tension. And speaking of tension…

Isidora jolted back, hand flying off of the monster like a shock. “Sorry,” she breathed. “I didn’t mean to grab you like that, it’s just…” She wavered, the monster’s head turning back toward her, eyes catching the streetlight and holding her in place.

There was a moment of silence where Isidora floundered for what she was trying to say. It watched her patiently, curiously, and didn’t remark on Isidora’s rude impulse to grab at a chunk of monster flesh.

Collecting herself as much as someone who had been saved by a social media-famous cryptid could, Isidora finally got out what she had been trying to say.

“If you ever need help finding other people like that,” she said, “I can help. I know a lot of the girls that you’ve seen online. We talk in other places, too, where civilians—non-sex workers—don’t get access to. If you need help, in the future, finding anyone… or any help, really, I want to help.”

Her piece said, Isidora breathed shakily. Maybe it was arrogant, to think that it would even need any help at all, but seeing someone (or something, whatever) actually _ doing something _ about the men that made their lives hell drove her to offer.

It was illegal, it was kind of immoral: this thing had been acting as judge and executioner, with the only jury being a list of vocal victims.

But damn, so was her job. And it felt good, for once, to have _ power _ on her side.

“What’s your phone number?”

Isidora’s head jerked back up from where she’d been lost in her thoughts. “My number…? Like, my day-to-day one, or my work one?”

The monster tilted its head again in thought. “Clever,” it praised. “We should get a burner phone.”

She wasn’t sure if it was talking to her or itself, but she nodded. “Pretty much everyone in my line of work uses a burner, or something like that,” she said. She recited her number, and from within its mass the monster’s phone emerged again, carried on a tendril of liquid darkness.

It tapped at its screen, she assumed to put in her phone number, and just as quickly stored the thing away again. “We will text you,” it said seriously, “once we get a burner. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Isidora breathed. “Oh, before you go—” She fumbled for her own phone. “Before you leave, they’re not gonna believe me if I don’t, would you… take a selfie with me?”

For a moment, the monster seemed to think this over. Isidora sweated, despite knowing no one other than shitheads had been killed by the thing. She’d been pushing her luck, she knew, but she also knew a picture with this monster would be the social media equivalent of a forcefield against guys like the one the monster was about to visit.

“We will take the selfie.”

Isidora snorted, despite herself. She couldn’t imagine this thing had ever said the word _ selfie _ out loud. It was like hearing her great grandfather trying to use ‘lit’ in a sentence, out of place and out of character.

Not that she was going to blow this opportunity. Hand just a bit shaky, she held up her phone and gestured at it. “Uhh, want to… crouch behind me? I’ll just…”

It grunted. “Know how to take a selfie,” it said, moving to stoop behind her. It sounded like it was arguing with more than just her. Again, she wondered if there was some kind of hivemind up in its brain, but she resisted probing further.

Apparently, though, it _ did _ know how to take a selfie. When Isidora held up her phone, her and the monster both in frame, holding a peace sign with her other hand, the monster’s grin widened further. With one of its own large, black hands, the monster made a peace sign, too.

She took the picture. Even with her face blanched with the camera’s flash, it was her favorite fucking selfie she’d ever taken.

She’d just given her phone number to a villagantee cryptid. Then taken a selfie with it. Isidora’s hands shook, just a bit, as she saved the picture. “I’ll text it to you, if you want,” she said, forcefully casual, like she took dope selfies with a popular monster every day of her life, “once you get your phone.”

Said cryptid nodded, and proceeded to reach out a clawed hand and _ pat her gently on the head. _

Isidora blinked.

Legs crouched and coiling, the monster leapt away, its mass moving with such a speed that a small gust of wind blew past it. Its form was dark enough that it blended into the darkness of the city, and she quickly lost track of it. Isidora clutched her coat close to her, suppressing a shiver.

Phone still gripped in her sweaty hand, she fired off one of the quickest tweets of her life. She didn’t even run the pic through Facetune.

**Isidor-you** @isiforia • 0s

omg! you won’t guess who just dropped by to help me out of a tight spot. no one told me he was over 6 ft tho lol. 🙏🙏😍😍 #SanFranCryptid

[**IMAGE**: a hispanic girl in a furry gray coat holds up a peace sign with her left hand, the light catching on two silver rings and her pink lip gloss; behind her, the background is entirely filled with an indistinct black figure, its mouth split in a wide smile. Its grin is made up of sharp teeth, each one the size of the girl’s head. It holds up its own peace sign opposite the girl’s, and its white teeth are the brightest thing in the picture.]


End file.
